Beijing: The Michael Phelps express charged inevitably on with a record-equalling seventh gold medal at the Beijing Games Saturday, ahead of the Olympics showpiece, the athletics' men's 100m final.
Phelps stormed home in the last leg of the men's 100m butterfly after seemingly being out of contention at the turn, to level the record of seven golds at one Games set by Mark Spitz in Munich 36 years ago.
The finger-tip victory over Serbia's Milorad Cavic kept the American ace on course to break Spitz's mark when he swims in the 4x100m medley relay which brings the curtain down on pool competition on Sunday.
The win lifted the United States to 15 gold medals, 11 behind table leaders China with 26.
On a day of 29 Olympic finals, the closing athletics event will be vying to snatch the headlines from Phelps when the three fastest runners of all time - Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay front up for a classic 100m final, assuming they get through their semis.
Bolt staked the strongest claim in the heats Friday, posting the sixth best time in the world this year despite slowing up after taking the lead.
"I just ran the first 50 metres, then I looked up to make sure I was safe and I shut it off," said Bolt after running a 9.92sec second heat.
Powell ran an effortless 10.02sec while Gay could only finish second in his heat at 10.09sec.
At the pool, Phelps's desperate last leg of the 100m butterfly to beat Cavic by one-hundredth of a second, was the only one of his six gold medal swims so far this week where he has failed to break the world record.
That put Great Britain's Rebecca Adlington under the spotlight as she shattered the longest-standing world swimming record, the women's 800m freestyle, taking 2.12secs off the 19-year-old mark set by American great Janet Evans in 1989.
Adlington's spectacular success followed her victory in the 400m freestyle final last Monday for the first swimming gold by a British woman in 48 years at the Olympics.
Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry set a world record in defending her women's 200m backstroke title.
Brazil's Cesar Cielo Filho won the men's splash-and-dash 50m freestyle final with 100m champion Alain Bernard third behind French compatriot Amaury Leveaux.
The first athletics gold of the day went to Russian Valeriy Borchin who held off former champion Jefferson Perez of Ecuador in the men's 20 kilometres race walk.
Meanwhile, outgoing tennis number one Roger Federer, enduring one of his worst seasons, will see his fortunes pick up with an assured Olympic medal when he partners Stanislas Wawrinka in the men's doubles final.
The Swiss duo play Sweden's Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson for the gold medal, while in the women's singles semi-finals giantkilling Chinese Li Na is against Russian Dinara Safina while the second semi is a Russian derby featuring Vera Zvonareva against Elena Dementieva.
China's badminton domination is expected to continue a day after Du Jing and Yu Yang won the women's doubles final.
An all-China women's singles final features world number one Xie Xingfang against defending Olympic champion Zhang Ning, and the men's doubles final pits China's Cai Yun and Fu Haifent against Hendra Setiawan and Markis Kido of Indonesia.
There are also finals Saturday in fencing, rowing, yachting, shooting, weightlifting and wrestling.
Comments
0 comment