Australia's women pursuit quartet will battle for the podium at the world track championships - but they'll have their work cut out to regain their title.
The Commonwealth champions kicked off the team's latest global challenge at the French venue by finishing fourth in qualifying in the 4000m event on Wednesday to set up a semi-final ride at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome, just outside Paris.
But in Thursday's outing against the fastest qualifiers from Italy, the quartet of Chloe Moran, Georgia Baker, Alexandra Manly and Maeve Plouffe will have to find something special to beat the well-drilled Italians who finished more than four seconds quicker.
Commonwealth road race champion Baker and Team BikeExchange-Jayco star Manly were part of the squad which won the world title in 2019, and after Australia's Commonwealth Games victory in August had high hopes of challenging for gold in France.
With Manly in as a replacement for Sophie Edwards in the team that won in Birmingham, the Australians clocked 4 minutes 15.173 seconds, while the Italian four, Elisa Balsamo, Chiara Consonni, Martina Fidanza and Vittoria Guazzini were timed at 4:11.011.
The winners of the Australia-Italy semi will meet the victors between Great Britain (4:13.117) and France (4:13.425), with the bronze medal race to feature the quickest two of the other six qualifiers.
There was disappointment for the equivalent Australia men's quartet - Conor Leahy, Kelland O'Brien, Joshua Duffy and Sam Welsford - who could only finish sixth in qualifying in 3:50.344, which rules out any prospect of fighting for the gold.
Traditionally one of Australia's strongest events, the men's pursuit team, winners for the 13th time in 2019, is in a transition phase after their bronze at the Commonwealths, and found themselves 2.252 seconds behind the top qualifiers from GB.
Key Australian hopes in on the opening day lay with the men's team sprint trio Leigh Hoffman, Matthew Richardson and Thomas Cornish, who qualified quickest ahead of the Dutch world and Olympic champions ahead of the final stages later on Wednesday.
