Australia enter the World Athletic Championships confronting the rude, yet realistic, possibility of not winning a medal, new coach Craig Hilliard admitted.
"Obviously we want medals. I would love three medals but in reality we could end up with zero. I don't necessarily see that's going to be a failure - we are in a transition period now," the Athletics Australia head coach said.
The 1991 world championships in Tokyo was the last time Australia did not win a medal at a world championships. 
"The realism is that we don't have a lot of medal chances, that's reality. There's no point in me sitting here rolling out a bunch of six other athletes going 'they're a medal chance, they're a medal chance' and they're not.
"Hopefully we can move a bunch of those athletes such as [pole vaulter] Alana Boyd or [discus thrower] Benn Harradine into that top eight and closer to the medal mark. That's generally in the past where we've fallen down. We've been OK at the top end but a lot of athletes who we would expect to make top 12 or top eight [haven't done so]."
The biggest hit to Australia's medal hopes came when team captain and world and Olympic champion Sally Pearson broke her wrist and was forced to withdraw.
Former world and Olympic silver medallist long jumper Mitch Watt also again could not overcome injury in time to qualify for the tournament in Beijing which begins this Saturday.
The greatest hope and expectation for medals will fall to race walker Jared Tallent, a regular medallist for Australia at world championships and Olympics, the former world champion discus thrower Dani Samuels and Kim Mickle, who won silver in the javelin at the last world championships in Moscow.
Australia won three medals in Moscow - silvers for Pearson and Mickle and Tallent won bronze - but no gold.
Seldom in the last two decades has Australia entered a world championships without at least one bona fide track and field star at the peak of their career. From Cathy Freeman to Jana Pitman, Steve Hooker and then Pearson, Australia has almost always had one high-profile "rock star" around whom the team was built. 
"Jared [Tallent] is in an unfashionable event obviously, that's just the way it is, but he is probably one of our best-performed athletes of all time," Hilliard said.
"So in terms of rock star I put him right up there. There is no question in terms of what Jared has achieved and is still capable of achieving. He sits right up there in my mind, just in terms of the number of medals he's won and the way he performs whenever it counts - he's a phenomenal athlete."
Tallent, the two-time Olympic silver medallist, will confront what should be the cleanest field of walkers in what has been a grubby sport of drug cheats in recent years. Six Russian walkers this week tested positive to EPO.
Hilliard said Australia's team was in transition from reliance on a star such as Pearson.
"This team is basically going to be the team for Rio with a few additions. We lost a few through injury leading into this championships - hopefully all those athletes can get back for next year and we can uncover a couple more. There is not really going to be any new faces where you go 'Wow where did that person come from?'.
He admitted that a poor medal haul would have an impact on funding but that was just a reality of the sports commission funding structure.
"Of course it does, it always will. We can't run away from that, you are here to perform," he said.
"At the end of the day there is no running around that one [on] where people sit, where they are. I'm not trying to paint a negative picture here but we want medals, everyone wants medals."
Hilliard said former world indoors and Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning long jumper Fabrice Lapierre was "a bit of a smokey" having overcome injuries.