Swimming: Michael Phelps recorded his sixth gold and his sixth world record of the Olympics by winning the men's 200 metres individual medley at Beijing's Water Cube this morning.
Phelps is aiming to surpass Mark Spitz's record haul of seven gold medals at a single Games and so far he has not only kept pace with Spitz's achievements in Montreal 36 years ago by winning every event, he has also done so in a succession of world records.
In his latest win the American decimated a field that was expected to provide him with one of his more serious challenges as he aims for eight Olympic golds, but there was little Hungarian Lazslo Cseh or fellow American Ryan Lochte could do but battle for the minor places.
Phelps led from start to finish and his time of 1 minute 54.23 seconds was more than half-a-second faster than the world record he set at the United States trials in Omaha earlier in the year.
Cseh took second in a new European record time of 1:56.52, one-hundredth of a second ahead of Lochte, who had earlier won gold in the 200m backstroke in a new world-record time.
The 23-year-old showed little reaction apart from a quick shake of his fist after his latest victory but burst into a broad smile on the podium later.
"I just wanted to step on it in the first 50 a little bit and try and get out to an early lead," said Phelps. "I knew in the first half if I got a big enough lead I thought I could hang on and that's all I wanted to do."
Phelps then kept his historic quest on track by qualifying for the final of the 100m butterfly, his last individual event in a packed programme that will conclude with the 4x100m medley relay on Sunday.
Serbia's Milorad Cavic set the fastest time in the semi-finals, touching the wall in 50.92ss to qualify 0.05s ahead of Phelps.