Michael Phelps' dream of a record eight gold medals was dramatically kept alive by team-mate Jason Lezak in a 4x100m freestyle relay thriller Monday, while the first drugs scandal emerged at the Beijing Olympics.
The win gave Phelps two golds from two events but the kudos has to go to the US relay anchor Lezak who dived into the water more than a body length behind France's Alain Bernard and made up the deficit with his final strokes.
At 50m to go Lezak told himself there was "no way" he could catch Bernard and save Phelps' quest. "Then I thought: 'That's ridiculous, this is an Olympic Games. You have to go for it'," he said. On the way, the US took an astonishing four seconds off the world record they had set in the heats, posting a new mark of 3min 08.24 sec.
"Unbelievable!" said Phelps. "Jason finished that race way better than we could have even asked for. "The last 10 to 15 metres were incredible. I lost my voice, and I was definitely pretty emotional after that." Such was the pace of the race, Australia's Eamon Sullivan added to Bernard's heartache when he broke the Frenchman's 100m freestyle world record as he headed Phelps in the lead-off leg.
The gold lifted the United States to second on the medal table with three gold and a total of 11 medals. Hosts China remain firmly on top in the bid to claim global sports supremacy. Into the third day and after 26 finals, China has won six with 12 countries sharing the remaining golds. Phelps, who began his unprecedented eight-gold quest on Sunday with a world record win in the 400m individual medley, was in action twice Monday morning.
He qualified fourth fastest in the men's 200m freestyle semi-finals but appeared to be racing within himself just over an hour before the relay final. Beijing's unique swimming venue continued to churn out world records with a further four set in the morning session Monday.
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