Aussie women lead the way

The women's swim team have continued to propel Australia's medal tally at the Beijing Olympics, with the 4 x 200m freestyle relay team causing a massive boilover to take gold, while Eamon Sullivan and Brenton Rickard grabbed silver and Jessicah Schipper took bronze in a great day in the pool.

United States was expected to dominate the 4 x 200m relay, but the Aussie team of Stephanie Rice, Kylie Palmer, Bronte Barratt and Linda Mackenzie had other ideas, stunning the Americans.

The Australians' time of seven minutes 44.31 seconds smashed the former record held by the United States by almost six seconds. It helped erase the slight disappointment when world record holder Sullivan was beaten by Frenchman Alain Bernard in the men's 100m freestyle.

Sullivan had set a new world mark in the semis, but could not reproduce that in the final, edged out by 0.11 of a second. Rickard was much more pleased with his silver in the men's 200m breaststroke as he trailed in Japan's Kosuke Kitajima.

Schipper's hopes for gold in the women's 200m butterfly was foiled by a pair of locals as she finished a distant third behind China's Liu Zige and Jiao Liuyang, who both beat the Australian's world record.

That leaves Australia with 16 medals overall, five gold, all to women's swimmers, four silvers and seven bronze. Australia may add to that tally in the team dressage in the equestrian, which is set to be completed late on Day 6.

In semi-final action in the pool, Libby Trickett fortunately scraped through to the 100m freestyle final, while Leisel Jones' dreams of double gold were enhances as she made it through second fastest for the 200m breaststroke. Hayden Stockel is into the 100m backstroke final as well.

In the evening session, Sullivan (50m free), Kylie Palmer, Melissa Gorman (800m free), Meagan Ney and Belinda Hocking (200m back) all progressed to the semi-finals.

It was a great day for Australia in the team sports, with the men's basketball team notching their first win of the tournament 106-68 over Iran. The softballers also got off the mark against China 3-1, while the Hockeyroos kept their unbeaten streak intact with a 3-0 success over South Africa, and the men's water polo team got past Canada 8-5 thanks to a hat-trick from Pietro Figlioli.

The rowing and sailing were called off for the day in contrasting circumstances with a storm over the rowing course and no wind at Qingdao.

There was no success for our table tennis teams, with both the men's and women's teams suffering defeats, our shooters struggled in the women's skeet and women's 50m rifle, three positions, the men's C2 team in the canoe/kayak bowed out at the semi-final stage before the competition was called off, while the Aussie judoka failed to make an impression.