It was business as usual at the Aquatic Super Series in Perth with James Magnussen starting 2015 with a 100m freestyle win while Cate Campbell surprised herself holding out younger sister Bronte in the 50m freestyle.
The annual Perth series, featuring strong teams from Australia, the USA, Japan and China, begins a world championship year, with Kazan in Russia hosting the titles in August.
All eyes were on the marquee events on Friday - the men's 100m and women's 50m freestyles.
Magnussen has a new team around him, not endorsed by Swimming Australia, and that experiment has started well with the dual world champion pipping Cameron McEvoy to open 2015.
Magnussen's time was a little outside what he swam this time last year to win the 100m freestyle in Perth but he was happy with his 48.43s. McEvoy was just behind in 48.76s.
"I'm pretty happy," Magnussen said.
"I definitely feel fitter, stronger, leaner so I'm feeling really positive and really sort of excited about the year."
Cate Campbell flagged leading into the event that she was still far from 100 per cent on her recovery from shoulder surgery and she wouldn't have been surprised to be beaten by younger sister Bronte, but that didn't happen in the 50m freestyle.
Cate proved too strong, swimming 23.96s - only .07s off the time she swam to win Commonwealth Games gold last year. Bronte was second in 24.24s.
"I knew that I would have to be really quick to beat Bronte because she has been swimming amazingly well but I just swam within a tenth of my best so I'm really happy," Cate Campbell said.
Other results included Australia's Emma McKeon winning both the 200m freestyle and 100m butterfly, while Mack Horton pipped David McKeon to win the 400m freestyle.
Australia finished the night winning the women's 50m freestyle relay before the USA won the men's 50m individual medley relay.
Australia is leading the points tally after the opening night on 318 ahead of the USA (284), China (270) and Japan (268).
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