Kelland O’Brien, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Oliver Bleddyn nudged speeds of 70km/h and after 4000m, stopped the clock at 3:42.958 which was just 0.9 of a second off the world record.

It sets up a round one showdown with defending Olympic champions Italy who were fourth fastest in 3:44.351 when the Team Pursuit resumes at 3.14am on Wednesday.

The winner will face either Denmark or Great Britain in the gold medal race 24 hours later, while the losers will race for bronze.

“We’ll have to go back and watch the race footage tonight and see what sort of strategy they used today,” Kelland said of their Italian rivals.

“In Tokyo three years ago on the first day nobody would have said Italy was going to win and then they came out and won. There’s a big fight on our hands and 48 hours to go so we’ll just keep our heads on for now and look at the race footage later.”

Three-time Olympian Sam believes the Australian outfit still has another level to go in coming rounds.

“It was a bit of a surprise to see a 42 to be honest, I wasn’t expecting that, but we had a lot more to give at the end of the race,” Sam said.

“There are a few things we can tweak technically, dial in a bit more and use our strengths to our advantage even more than we have.”

Kelland set a scorching pace for the team early and then peeled off the front after 2500m as Connor, Sam and Oliver brought them home.

“It’s a completely different role to what I’ve done before and I’m liking the challenge of coming out of the gate,” Kelland said.

“We don’t really know what our limits are and that’s what we’re here to find out over the next couple of days but we’re really proud of what we’ve done so far.”

With only Sam and Kelland returning from the team that was heartbroken by a crash in qualifying in Tokyo, the pair revealed they had spoken to former teammates Leigh Howard and Alex Porter leading up to their race in Paris.

“We had a quick chat to him (Alex) this morning and Leigh Howard from Tokyo as well had a chat this week,” he said.

“It’s amazing the support that continues in this group and the people we’ve had around us for years now and it goes so wide and deep into our roots, we’re just so proud to wear the Australian colours here.

“For us it was a bit of redemption coming here and really nail the process. The lead-up and the prep, nail all the little things so when we come here it’s an easier process and we’re really dialed in.”

Australia was also in action in the Men’s Team Sprint on opening night at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome where Matthew Glaetzer, Matthew Richardson and Leigh Hoffman were third fastest in qualifying.

The Aussies rode 42.072 and now face China in the next round from 3am AEST on Wednesday, with the two fastest times from round one to advance to the gold medal ride.

The Netherlands set the fastest time with an Olympic Record 41.279.

“We were hoping to be a bit quicker, 42.0 is a pretty average day for us,” Leigh said.

“We were definitely hoping to go in that sub 41.5 range for this first ride, but on the day we made a few adjustments to gearing and we’ll do that (in the next round) and see if we can bring the team back together.

“At the end of the day we have to ride our own race, we were only riding against the clock there, so we have to do the fastest possible time we can do as a team.”

Reece Homfray