Second Phelps win - Bindra delights India, more China gold (Roundup)

By Peter Auf der Heyde Aug 11, 2008, 15:16 GMT

Beijing - Five world records tumbled in a remarkable second day of Olympic swimming Monday as American superstar Michael Phelps' won his second gold in a dramatic 4x100 metres freestyle relay.

In shooting, Abhinav Bindra won India's first ever Olympic gold medal in an individual event, while China won three more golds- two in women's weightlifting and one in men's synchronized diving,

Archery powerhouse South Korea took their gold tally to four with a men's team victory over Italy, who picked up two golds in fencing and judo.

Out of competition, the first doping case of the Beijing Olympics saw Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno kicked out of the Games after testing positive for the blood booster EPO.

Phelps again took centre-stage in the Ice Cube but he remains on course for an historic eight golds only thanks to his team-mate Jason Lezak.

The US relay team looked well beaten at the final turn in the 4x100 freestyle as Frenchman Alain Bernard led Lezak by almost half a second.

But the 32-year-old pulled ever closer to Bernard, whose 100m freestyle record of 47.50 seconds from earlier this year was bettered by the opening Australian swimmer Eamon Sullivan with a 47.24 swim to give his team an early lead.

Bernard admitted later that he swam too close to Lezak, allowing the American to make use of his waves and touch just centimetres ahead of Bernard.

The US team, who were cheered on by US President George W Bush, slashed an astonishing 3.99 seconds off the world record they set in Sunday's semi-finals. The top five teams were all faster than the 15- hour-old former record from a US reserve team in the heats.

Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry and Japan's Kosuke Kitajima also swam world records in the morning session, while Italian Federica Pellegrini added one during the evening heats.

In the women's 100m breaststroke semis, Coventry swam 58.77 seconds to break the world record of 58.97 set by Natalie Coughlin at the US trials last month.

In the men's 100m breaststroke, Kitajima repeated his gold medal performance from Athens in a world record time of 58.91 seconds, taking 0.22 seconds off the previous mark of 59.13 seconds set by American Brendan Hansen two years ago.

And Pellegrini bettered the women's 200 metres freestyle world record in the heats clocking 1 minute 55.45 seconds, shaving seven hundreds of a second off the 1:55.52 minutes Laure Manaudou of France swam at 2007 worlds in Melbourne.

Elsewhere in the pool Australian Lisbeth Trickett won the women's 100m butterfly and Briton Rebecca Adlington stunned American favourite Katie Hoff in the women's 400m freestyle, winning in 4:03.22.

On the shooting range, the individual gold medal that had always eluded India came at last when Abhinav Bindra won the men's 10 metre air rifle.

He claimed victory with a total of 700.5 points, with defending champion Zhu Qinan of China taking silver with 699.7 and Finland's Henri Hakkinen bronze with 699.4.

While India has taken Olympic team gold eight times in men's field hockey, individual success had never happened until Monday.

Finland also made it onto the medals table with a gold for Satu Makela-Nummela in the women's trap shooting and Elnur Mammadli won Azerbaijan's first gold in the 73kg judo, but it is China who continue to dominate.

In Women's 58 kg weightlifting Chen Yanqing retained her Olympic title and Zhang Xiangxiang won the men's 62kg class to keep the hosts firmly top of the medals table with nine golds.

China also remained on course for a clean sweep of diving gold when world champions Lin Yue and Huo Liang won the men's 10 metres platform synchronized event.

The hosts were thwarted on the badminton court however with Miyuki Maeda and Satoko Suetsuna of Japan upset favourites Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen.

South Korea and Italy also enjoyed good days with Maria Valentina Vezzali winning fencing gold and Giulia Quintavalle winning the 57kg class in judo for Italy, and South Korea moving ahead of the US in gold medals thanks to their men's archery team.

Meanwhile it was announced that Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel had tested positive for the blood booster EPO, making her the first doping case in Beijing.

Moreno, 27, failed a test conducted on July 31 in the Olympic village and according to International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies flew home the same night before the test results were known. She was due to compete in the road time trial.