Matthew Glaetzer has bettered his stunning 1km time trial benchmark on the way to an 11th Australian title on day one of the track nationals in Brisbane.
The South Australian finished in 59.759 seconds, ahead of Patrick Constable (1:01.812) and Cameron Scott (1:01.820) to win the first gold medal on offer at the titles.
The two-time Olympian clocked 59.970 seconds in November on his way to a World Cup victory in Manchester.
It made him the first to go below the magical minute mark at sea level, but Glaetzer was confident of beating that in Thursday's hot and humid conditions at the Anna Meares Velodrome.
A cooler-than-expected day prevailed, but Glaetzer was still good enough to defy that on Australia's fastest track.
"It goes to show it's not a perfect day but it's still world record sort of conditions, so I was stoked with that," the 25-year-old said.
"Records are made to be broken and, especially when it's your record, you just want to keep bettering yourself.
"I love pushing myself and my coach Nick (Flyger) realised that I respond well to a challenge so we're posting some pretty ambitious targets and getting close to achieving them."
While not an overall world record - that mark stands at 56.303 courtesy of France's Francois Pervis in the high altitude of Mexico - the performance consolidates Glaetzer as a red-hot favourite for the event at April's Commonwealth Games.
Glaetzer, who picked up two fourth places at the Rio Games, backed up his time trial win to help South Australia to team sprint gold later in the night, 0.55 seconds ahead of Western Australia.
Stephanie Morton and Rikki Belder gave South Australia another gold in the women's team sprint, ahead of NSW, while Victoria pipped South Australia by 0.28 seconds in a thrilling men's pursuit.
Steph Morton and Rikki Belder won the women's team sprint. (John Veage) Source: John Veage
In a battle of the 2017 world pursuit champions, Alexander Porter and Rohan Wight were unable to hold off Kelland O'Brien, with former madison world champion Leigh Howard's return giving Victoria the edge.
Katrin Garfoot, who last month won her third-straight national time trial championship on the road, glided into her first track national titles campaign to help Queensland's pursuit team to second behind the Annette Edmondson-led South Australia.
Garfoot will also compete in Friday's individual pursuit in what is a sea change of sorts before reverting to the outdoors and gunning for gold in the Commonwealth Games road race and time trial.
