Twenty-year-old Clarence Munyai has broken Wayde van Niekerk's 200m South African record at the ASA Senior Championships at Tuks Stadium in Pretoria.
Running in the semifinals of the championships on Friday, Munyai stunned the crowd with his pace.
Van Niekerk, currently recovering from a serious knee injury, has held the record since June 2017.
Munyai, meanwhile, with this stellar performance has enhanced his reputation as one of South Africa's brightest sprinting prospects.
He won gold in the 200m at last year's Africa Under-20 Championships in Algeria, where he ran a 20.22-second race, but he smashed that time on Friday, setting a new SA record of 19.69s.
That time is just one-hundredth of a second off the African record of 19.68s, set by Namibia's Frankie Fredericks at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996.
The world record remains the 19.19s set by Usain Bolt in 2009.
Van Niekerk's SA record was 19.84s.
Munyai also competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where he ran in the 200m, but was eliminated after finishing third in his heat, in a time of 20.66s, which failed to qualify him for the semifinals.