MARIEKE'S GOLDEN SMILE
ROME, Aug 2: A shock gold medal to Marieke Guehrer has revived Australia's chances at maintaining their status as the second best swimming nation in the world after the penultimate day of the FINA world championships on Saturday. TODD BALYM AAP reports...
Guehrer stunned herself with an amazing victory in the 50m butterfly to secure Australia's third gold medal of the meet and move the Dolphins into third place on the medal table ahead of Sunday's final day.
The Australian women's 4x100m medley relay team almost book ended the session with a gold medal but freestyle anchor Libby Trickett fell desperately short of overhauling the Chinese team for the victory and had to settle for silver.
The upset of Australia's Olympic champions has catapulted the Chinese into second place on the medal table with four gold medals, behind the Michael Phelps led USA team with eight victories.
Guehrer came from nowhere to snatch the gold in the 50m fly final, touching in 25.48 seconds to claim her first major international medal.
"Oh my gosh I still can't believe it," said Guehrer, who quit the sport in 2006 but returned a year later.
"I had to look a couple of times at the scoreboard before it actually registered that I had won."
Guehrer was so shocked because Sweden's Therese Alshammar had set a world record in the semi-final, almost four tenths faster than the Australian's winning time.
But Alshammar, and former world record Marleen Veldhuis, both capitulated under the finals pressure to miss the medals as Guehrer stole the show.
"(The world record) is still a lot faster than what I did tonight that is why I was so surprised," she said.
The quartet of Trickett, Emily Seebohm, Sarah Katsoulis and Jess Schipper couldn't turn their favouritism into gold as the Chinese team jumped to an early lead that was too big to reel in.
China won in 3:52.19, eclipsing the Australia's world record, with the Dolphins just 0.39s further back followed by Germany.
"All we could have hoped for tonight was doing a personal best relay time and we did that and it's obvious we put together the best Australian team ever, so to come away with silver you can't be disappointed," said Trickett.
Australia's other finalist on Saturday Andrew Lauterstein had to settle for fifth in the race of the meet, 100m butterfly, as Phelps cemented his superstar status with a rousing win over Serbia's Milorad Cavic.
Phelps defied his 'slower' Speedo swimsuit to overhaul Cavic in the final 10m and set a new world record of 49.82s, the first man to break 50 seconds.
Cavic also dipped under the barrier, in 49.95s, while Lauterstein was back in 50.85s after being third at the turn.
Australia have several medal chances in the pool on the final day after Cate Campbell (50m freestyle) and Katsoulis (50m breaststroke) both qualified fastest for their finals.
Campbell clocked 24.08s to lead the one-lap dash, while Trickett also qualified in sixth after a 24.34s semi-final swim.
Katsoulis touched in 30.33s, just a tenth of a second outside of the world record, to lead the breaststroke while Tarnee White (30.80s) qualified in seventh place.
The Australian men's 4x100m medley relay team will also chase gold on Sunday as the Dolphins seek to avoid their worst world championship gold medal haul since Perth in 1991.
As it stands Australia (three gold, four silver, five bronze) needs at least one more gold medal to improve on the four gold, two silver and three bronzes they collected in Rome at the 1994 world championships.