The Auckland swimmer Nielsen Varoy won the 50 metre freestyle title on the final night of the New Zealand Short Course Swimming Championships in Wellington.
His time was just 32/100ths of a second outside Cameron Gibson's national record.
Straight after the win Varoy flew out China for the World University Games which start on Friday.
The returning world championship pair of Penelope Marshall and Daniel Bell, both from Swimming New Zealand's High Performance Centre, showed their class in winning the 200 backstroke finals in solid performances.
The swim of the night came from Christchurch student Sophia Batchelor who won the 16 years title in 2:07.53, which was more than a second faster than Marshall's winning time in the open final and took more than two seconds off Melissa Ingram's national age group record.
Southland's Natalie Wiegersma completed an excellent return to swimming after injury to win the women's 200m medley.