Swimming: Success Both Short and Sweet for Foster

Mark Foster, the maverick of British swimming who controversially failed to qualify for the Athens Olympics by 0.02sec, made his point to his national performance director Bill Sweetenham with a stunning gold in the 50m freestyle at the World Short Course Championships in Indianapolis.

The 34-year-old University of Bath swimmer's only regret was that the Australian Sweetenham was not in the United States this weekend to see him beat Olympic medallists and finalists to claim his fourth world gold medal in the 25m pool.

He adds the 2004 title to golds in 1993, 1999 and 2000 after he touched first in 21.58sec ahead of the Swede Stefan Nystrand in 21.66sec. The American Nick Brunelli and Brazil's Nicholas Santos trailed in the wake of the Englishman and were tied third in 21.71.

Foster is operating outside the disciplined but rigid regime of Sweetenham which has come under scrutiny after Britain's disappointing medal haul of two bronzes in Athens. Foster is now openingly contemptuous of Sweetenham who once described him as "Britain's most talented swimmer" but has questioned his Olympic record.

Foster has, in turn, pointed to his record of 40 international medals and rhetorically asked: "How many medals has he won?" Saturday night's win gives credibility to his claim that he should not have had to qualify for Athens when he was injured.

"It is nice to be world champion again," he said. "That was a great start. It was probably the fastest I have ever been over the first 25m. I was hanging on at the end but they had to come past me and I was not going to let that happen."

Foster also warmed up for his gold-medal swim by qualifying for today's final of the 50m butterfly, second fastest in 23.19, behind the favourite Ian Crocker of the United States.

Britain had three other swimmers in finals on the third day of the five-day meet. The teenager Cassandra Patten was fourth in the 400m freestyle in 4min 9.20sec and the Bearsden and Milngavie swimmer Alison Sheppard was fifth in the 100m individual medley in 1:01.51.

The Scot starts her favourite event, the 50m freestyle, today. Bath's Robin Francis, a silver medallist in the 400m individual medley, was seventh in the 200m individual medley in 1:58.80. But the weekend in the short pool belonged to Foster.