De Bruijn completes hat-trick

Inge de Bruijn lands her third gold of the Games

Holland's Inge de Bruijn added the women's 50m freestyle gold to her Sydney Olympic haul on Saturday, while America's Jenny Thompson picked up her eighth Olympic gold in women's 4x100m medley relay.

With successes in the 100m butterfly and 100m freestyle already behind her, de Bruijn powered home over the shorter distance to beat Sweden's Therese Alshammar in to second while Dara Torres of the United States took the bronze.

Her winning time of 24.32 secs was outside the world record mark she set in the semi-finals.

Great Britain's Alison Sheppard finished seventh in 25.45 secs after making an excellent start.

"I'm a little bit disappointed by my place and time, but even my best time would not have got a medal today," said Sheppard.

"The experience of the whole thing has been amazing though and I tried to enjoy it today. I was going well for the first 25 metres but at the end I guess I just wasn't fast enough.

"I've made an Olympic final and I've got to be happy with that. There was a lot more pressure in the final than the semi-final."

World record smashed

The American women's 4x100m medley relay team smashed the world record by more than three seconds as they dominated to take gold.

The quartet of B.J. Bedford, Megan Quann, Jenny Thompson and Dara Torres finished in 3mins 58.30secs, while silver medallists Australia also finished inside the old record, in 4:01.59.

For Thompson it was an eighth Olympic gold.

Japan took the bronze medal with the Great British team of Katy Sexton, Heidi Earp, Sue Rolph and Karen Pickering finished seventh in 4:07.61.