A year and three days since he was a toast of Australian sport by winning his third medal of the Paris Olympic Games, Matthew Richardson has become the fastest cyclist of all-time – while pedalling furiously in Great Britain colours.

The 26-year-old Richardson, who caused plenty of ill-feeling among the Australian cycling community when he decided after the Games to switch his allegiance to his birth country, has flourished since his “defection”.

But the English-born rider’s biggest achievement yet in Team GB colours came at the Konya Velodrome in Turkey on Thursday (local time). Richardson became the first man to smash the nine-second barrier over 200 metres on the track, clocking a landmark 8.941 seconds from a flying start.

Richardson sped round the track at the venue, which has altitude assistance due to its location 1200 metres above sea level, at an average speed of 80.5km/h.

“It’s cool to be able to call myself the fastest cyclist of all time,” he said afterwards.

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Richardson, who learned all his cycling in Perth after moving from England as a youngster, said: “It was a lot faster than I’ve previously ridden. I was basically just a passenger. I gave the bike a bit of direction and it was just steering itself almost. I rode of lot of it outside the sprint lane, so I know there’s a bit more there.”

Richardson, who was double Commonwealth champion before winning his two silvers and a bronze in the gold-and-green last August, has since been banned for life by AusCycling after he walked away from its program.

But he said he considered his latest achievement, in a special record-breaking day organised by British Cycling at the speedy Turkish velodrome, to be “one of the biggest things I’ve ever done”.

“People win Olympic medals all the time, people win world championships all the time; people don’t break world records all the time, and people definitely don’t ride sub-nine seconds all the time, because it’s never happened before,” he said before the attempt.

Richardson was also the record holder briefly during the Paris Games after a blistering flying lap of 9.091sec in qualifying for the match sprint, only for Dutch champion Harrie Lavreysen to break it moments after.

“Literally, about 30 seconds after I watched Harrie go round the track, I was like, ‘and it’s gone!’,” he said.

“I want extra goals, extra things to chase – that’s what this is to me.”

Richardson’s record came aboard a custom-painted Hope-Lotus HB.T bike, with a new seatpost, handlebars and cranks. He also wore a new skinsuit.

He wasn’t the only Briton to break a world record. Will Bjergfelt set a world record for the C5 UCI Hour Record, covering 51.471 kilometres in 60 minutes. He became the first para-cyclist to break the 50-kilometre barrier.

-with AAP