Canberra para-athlete Scott Reardon has sprinted his way to gold at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Doha with victory in the T42 100m for leg amputees.
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The fastest qualifier coming into the finals, Reardon got his nose in front to stop the clock in a time of 12.13 seconds - a mere one-hundredth of a second in front of Russia's Anton Prokhorov.
It was sweet revenge for Reardon, the 25-year-old having to share the gold medal two years ago at the world championships in Lyon in 2013 with Germany's Heinrich Popow.
"You come to championships to win championships and that's the most important thing," Reardon said.
"I probably didn't get the time I wanted, but when people look back, how I got there won't matter.
"It will just show me as world champion, and that's so exciting."
The result is the culmination of more than a decade of determination and training.
In 2002, Reardon severed his right leg through the knee when his shoelace caught in the power take off shaft of a tractor.
He spent a month in hospital recovering and amazed doctors by re-learning to walk in just one week.
Reardon continued to water-ski on one leg, representing Australia three times at the water-skiing world championships and winning the world title twice in 2007 and 2009.
He attended a Paralympic Talent Search day in 2006 and was immediately identified as having the potential to run on the track at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
Reardon won a silver in the 100m at the London Games and narrowly missed a medal in the 200m, finishing fourth, spurring him on to next year's Paralympic Games in Rio.
"I train my backside off to achieve the best," Reardon said.
"This is just a motivator for even more.
"The standard out there was crazy.
"Two of the faster guys in this event couldn't be here, but everybody else really stood up and made the race a challenge for us toward the front.
"I want to take the next step and believe that I can do that, break the 12-second barrier, and hopefully become a Paralympic champion."
After juggling water skiing and athletics for a while, Reardon - who hails from Temora in country NSW - moved to Canberra in 2009 to train at the AIS and focus on his athletics career.
At the AIS, he trained alongside his sporting heroes, former track star and gold medallist Heath Francis and gold medallist and world record holder Evan O'Hanlon.
Angie Ballard from NSW won the T53 wheelchair 400m and a sixth gold medal for the Australian team at these championships.
Queensland's Torita Isaac joined Reardon and Ballard on the podium, with a bronze medal in the T38 400m for athletes with cerebral palsy.
