Phelps Set to Make Eight-medal History

Michael Phelps stands on the verge of Olympic history as he seeks to emulate the Russian gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin tonight by becoming the second athlete to win eight medals at a single games.

Phelps edged out his United States team-mate Ian Crocker in the 100m butterfly final last night with an Olympic record of 50.25sec, raising his tally to five golds and two bronze with one event to come - and the 4x100 metres medley relay teamare expected to take gold.

Phelps will not take part in the final, instead giving Crocker the chance to swim, but he will still win any medal won by the team because he took part in the heats and so will not jeopardise his chance of winning eight medals.

The pre-games hype was whether Phelps could better Mark Spitz's seven swimming golds in Munich in 1972. Right hype; wrong person.

Born in Leningrad, Dityatin won eight gymnastics medals in 1980 at a Moscow Olympics reduced to 80 nations by the US-led boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; a total of 202 are competing in Athens. Dityatin also won only three gold medals, whereas Phelps may finish with twice as many, although even he will never match Dityatin's six medals in a single day.

Yesterday's was Phelps's toughest test. Crocker set a world record in the US trials, more than half a second faster than Phelps. Last night Phelps was fifth at the turn, trailing Crocker by nearly 0.8sec, before a second 50m in 26.89sec stole the race at the touch.

For Britain, the story was no better. Rebecca Cooke, in form, courageous but not quite good enough, finished sixth in the 800m freestyle; Katy Sexton, a world champion out of form, struggled in seventh in the 200m backstroke final.

Sexton came to Athens as the first British woman to have become a world champion, no less, but last night swam three seconds slower than her winning time in Barcelona to finish in 2min 12.11sec. Her preparations had been disrupted by a chest infection and asthma attacks, exacerbated by chlorine in the pool. For all that, this was a huge disappointment to rank alongside Melanie Marshall's in the 200m freestyle.

Meanwhile, there was no placating British swimming's angry mood. They are furious at the British Olympic Association's reluctance to support an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the shenanigans that led to City of Stockport's James Goddard being awarded a bronze medal in the 200m backstroke only to be stripped of it later.

It took the United States 24 minutes on Thursday night to use a form-filling technicality to overturn the disqualification of Aaron Peirsol in the final for an illegal turn - a decision that briefly saw Goddard promoted to bronze.

It took 24 hours for BOA officials to delay a decision on whether to back a swimming protest to CAS. The lack of BOA approval has undermined Bill Sweetenham, British swim ming's national performance director, and has left Goddard in mental turmoil. It is an administrative disgrace.

So it all rests today with David Davies to deliver a second individual medal, in the 1500m final. He broke the British record with 14:57.03 in yesterday's heat and looks in excellent trim, but his chances have been dismissed by the great Australian Kieren Perkins, whose exploits in swimming's marathon in Barcelona in 1992 kept most of his fellow countrymen awake through the night.

"You could cut one of Grant Hackett's arms off - and maybe a foot as well - and he is still going to win the race," Perkins predicted of the Australian who broke his world record with 14:34.56. "The only question is whether Grant feels rested and relaxed enough to break the world record again."

Perkins's assessment that Hackett is a certain winner can hardly be questioned. But he may have erred in dismissing Davies's chances entirely, suggesting the minor medals will be between the Australian Craig Stevens, the United States' Larsen Jensen and Russia's Yuri Prilukov.

But British spirits have grown since Stephen Parry's butterfly bronze. Yesterday the men's and women's medley relay teams set national records, with the men's quartet of Gregor Tait, James Gibson, James Hickman and Matt Kidd qualifying third fastest for today's final.

But the lasting image yesterday was that of Gary Hall strutting his stuff after taking gold in the 50m freestyle. It was the event that Mark Foster did not swim, having failed to pre-qualify at the British trials, with an excuse that he did not know what time he had to swim. It sounded pretty amateurish at the time. After a mediocre week, it now sounds laughable.