A PARA-CYCLING world record, dual gold road national titles and now a successful individual pursuit title defence at the 2020 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships - David Nicholas is a man on fire.
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The Bathurst resident built on the brilliant start to his season on Friday when he claimed the gold medal in the men's C3 individual pursuit at the world titles in Milton, Canada.
Before the Queensland native relocated to Bathurst he had ridden his way to three consecutive individual pursuit rainbow jerseys.
That alone would have given him favouritism to clinch another, but Nicholas' rivals had other reasons to consider him a threat as well.
Nicholas had clocked a world record three minutes, 26.472 seconds effort for the 3000 metres C3 individual pursuit during qualifiers at the Brisbane Para-Track GP in December. It bettered a mark which had stood since 2014.
He had also won the national time trial and UCI time trial, as well as the road race, at the Cycling Australia Road Nationals in January.
During qualifying in Milton, Nicholas averaged 51.502km/hr as he flew through the 12 laps - 3km - of the track and clocked a 3:29.700.
Though he was not the quickest to the 500m or 1,000m split, he powered home to be the fastest qualifier, just two-tenths of a second ahead of Great Britain's Jaco Van Gass.
In the battle for the gold medal, it was Van Gass who made the quicker start, reaching the 500m mark over a second quicker than the Bathurst talent.
That gap had increased to almost two seconds at the halfway mark, but Nicholas' strength and stamina then came to the fore.
He surged to the lead on the final lap and went on to win the gold by half a second in a time of 3:28.764. His average speed was 51.733 km/hr.
It meant Nicholas snared his fourth straight individual pursuit rainbow jersey and sixth career world title.
He will have the chance to make that seven when contesting Sunday's scratch race.
