BEIJING – Michael Phelps has led United States to a gold medal in the men’s 4x100 metres medley relay at the Beijing Olympics, smashing the world record by nearly 2 seconds.

Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansens, Michael Phelps and Jason Lezak touched in 3:29.43, lowering the old mark of 3:30.68 set by the United States at last Games in Athens. It was the 25th world record to fall in the Water Cube.

Their splits were: 53.16, 59.27, 50.15 and 46.76.

Phelps earned his eight gold medal of the Beijing Games to became the winningest athlete at a single Olympics.

Other medals were in the 100 and 200 butterfly, 200 and 400 individual medley, 200 freestyle, 4x200 freestyle, 4x100 freestyle and set seven world record for these events, with the exception of yesterday’s 100 metres butterfly when he won in a Olympic record of 50.58, just 0.01 seconds ahead of Cavic.

World record evolution (Time, Team/Nationality, Place, Date):

3:30.68 United States USA Athens 21.08.04
3:31.54 United States USA Barcelona 27.07.03
3:33.48 United States USA Yokohama 29.08.02
3:33.73 United States USA Sydney 23.09.00
3:34.84 United States USA Atlanta 26.07.96

In the same event, Russia set an European record of 3:31.92 placing at 4th place. Arkady Vyatchanin (53.36), Roman Sludnov (59.45), Evgeny Korotshkin (51.62) and Evgeniy Lagunov (47.79) finished fourth behind Australia (3:30.04, Oceanic and Commonwealth record) and China (3:31.18, new Asian record).