Celebrity Fashion Watcher

 Watching on deck, Phelps let out a resounding "Yeaaaaaah!" and thrust both arms toward the roof of the Water Cube. His quest to break Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals had survived what will likely be its toughest test. He shattered the world record set by their "B" team the previous evening in the preliminaries, touching with a time of 3 minute, 8.24 seconds — nearly 4 full seconds below the 15-hour-old mark of 3:12.23.

"Unbelievable," said Phelps, who swam the leadoff leg and then became the team’s biggest cheerleader. "Jason finished that race better than we could even ask for. I was fired up. Going into that last 50, I was like, `Aw, this is going to be a close race.’ Jason’s last 10 or 15 meters were incredible."

The Americans won the 400 free relay at seven straight Olympics, but watched the Australians and South Africans take gold at the last two games.

Bernard was the world record holder in the 100, but he surrendered that mark as well. Australia’s Eamon Sullivan broke the individual record by swimming the leadoff leg in 47.24 — ahead of Bernard’s mark of 47.50.  Lezak swam his 100 in a staggering 46.06, the fastest relay leg in history though it doesn’t count as an official record.

Garrett Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones also did their parts swimming the middle legs of the relay, overcoming the enormous pressure of making sure they didn’t mess up Phelps’ attempt to take down the Holy Grail of Olympic records.

While the Americans whooped it up on deck, Bernard clung to the wall, his head down. The swimmer who had talked confidently of beating the Americans — "smashing" them, some media reported — was the last one to leave the pool.