No gold, but trio lays foundation for Rio Zoe Buckman, right, takes up her customary place on the inside lane during the women's 1500m final at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Moscow. JAVELIN thrower Kim Mickle's breakthrough silver medal on the last night of the world titles in Moscow lifted the Australian medal tally to three, equalling the total at the past two major championships. The Australian team has been nothing if not consistent over the past three years. While the Moscow tally of two silver and one bronze does not equate to the gold (Sally Pearson) and two silvers (Mitchell Watt, Jared Tallent) from the London Olympics last year, it does lay a foundation for the run to the next Olympics in Rio in 2016. Pearson and Tallent remain Australia's most bankable medal earners. Despite an injury-disrupted season, Pearson again revealed her champion's qualities to perform in the 100m hurdles, claiming the silver medal behind new US sensation Brianna Rollins. In an event that goes for four hours, the 50km walk, Tallent is an extraordinarily consistent performer, with two Olympic and two world championships medals now to his name, the latest a bronze in Moscow. In the absence of Watt and former Olympic pole vault champion Steve Hooker, someone needed to step up if the Australian team was not to drop its performance, and it was 28-year-old Mickle, a world youth champion in 2001 who is finally delivering on her promise. Australia's highly credentialled throws group has promised much in recent years and it was good to see Mickle and Kathryn Mitchell both recording top-five places in the javelin, the first time two Australian throwers have been represented in the top five at a global championship. There were promising signs elsewhere. Chief among them was fearless 1500m runner Zoe Buckman, 24, who won her semi-final commandingly to qualify for her first major final but discovered she didn't have the legs to back that up when the medals were decided. Buckman finished seventh but returns home confident that she is now a world-class athlete. Young man-mountain Julian Wruck, 22, was the youngest male in the discus final, taking a step up from his Olympic debut last year, to finish 11th and there is clearly much more to come from him. But the future of Australia's best female discus thrower Dani Samuels, the 2009 world champion, is clouded after she again stumbled at the step required to reach the world's top eight, finishing in 10th place. She admitted that she was not coping with the competition pressure at the highest level. In road events, there were bright performances from marathoner Jess Trengove, 25, who finished 11th in only her third marathon, and 20km walker Dane Bird-Smith, 21, who came into Moscow ranked 38th in the world and left ranked 11th. Without a gold medal, the Australian team was well down the final medal table (19th, compared with eighth in Daegu two years ago) but there were enough signs to suggest it won't stay there.