Grace Brown has agonisingly just missed out on time trial gold - but the Australian cycling team was at last able to celebrate a new world champion in Glasgow in exciting and resilient junior champion Felicity Wilson-Haffenden.
Commonwealth gold medallist Brown produced a magnificent ride in the elite race against the clock in Stirling, Scotland, on Thursday, falling less than six seconds short of annexing the gold won by American Chloe Dygert.
But earlier, Hobart's 18-year-old Wilson-Haffenden showed why Australian cycling has a new star on its hands as she took the junior time trial crown just five days after a dreadful crash in the road race.
Her triumph was the first from the cycling team after the Australian para-cyclists had until then hogged all the golds and the limelight at the first multi-discipline world championships based around Glasgow.
In one of the marquee road events, penultimate rider Brown, who won silver at the Wollongong world championships last year, poured on the pressure in a long, demanding time trial over 36.2km and looked as if she might have timed her run perfectly.
Dygert had earlier clocked 46 minutes 59.80 seconds but, though half a minute down at the second of three checkpoints at 23.3km, 31-year-old Brown grew only stronger, powering up the final gruelling cobbled ascent towards Stirling Castle to miss out on gold by just 5.67sec.
“I think knowing how close it is, I feel like I could have paced my ride a little better,” Brown said. “So I feel like those six seconds I could have got somewhere. But I really had nothing more to give at the end.”
Dygert pulled off a remarkable double after winning the individual pursuit title on the track seven days earlier, her performance made even more praiseworthy by the fact she'd been struck down by illness after her track duties.
"If the race had been yesterday I don't think I would have started," said Dygert, who'd been suffering from cold symptoms.
"Grace Brown was amazing, a super-strong finish. I just gave 100 per cent and fight with everything I have, that’s all I could do."
Earlier, 'Fliss' Wilson-Haffenden, who's made extraordinarily swift strides since swapping a very promising hockey career for cycling a couple of years ago, broke the team's golden duck after a performance of real grit so soon after her weekend calamity.
Bearing the scars of Saturday's road race accident when she slid off on a downhill corner on the opening lap and flew across the tarmac into metal barriers, the Tasmanian covered the 13.4km course in 19:31.51, almost 17 seconds quicker than British home favourite Izzy Sharp.
“It was pretty hard, pretty disappointing to crash on Saturday. I put a lot into that race,” Wilson-Haffenden explained afterwards.
“Personally, I felt like I let a lot of people down, because there was a lot of people who put so much time and money and energy into getting me here. Today, I was just happy just to give my best, and whatever that result may be, be happy. To win today was unbelievable."
Meanwhile, the Australian para-cyclists continued on their own medal-winning ways on the roads, with three more time trial silvers.
Darren Hicks added to his silver in the C2 individual pursuit on the track with another second place in the C2 time trial, while Emily Petricola, track C4 pursuit champion, also finished runner-up in her C4 time trial discipline.
Alana Forster earned silver in the women's C5 event, but was no match for Britain's amazing 45-year-old Sarah Storey, who took her world title tally to an incredible 42.
