Michael Phelps became the most successful Olympic athlete of all time by claiming his 10th gold medal in the 200m butterfly.Phelps collected his fourth gold of the 29th Olympiad in Beijing to add to the six gold and two bronze medals secured in Athens four years ago.
The 23-year-old led from the halfway point but was made to battle hard to win in a world record time of 1:52.03 seconds, beating his own previous best by 0.06s ahead of Hungary's Laszlo Cseh and Japan's Takeshi Matsuda.
That keeps the American on target to win an unprecedented eight gold medals in the Chinese capital, with another on the cards later Wednesday morning in the 4x200m freestyle relay.
World records were the order of the day as France's Alain Bernard and Australian Eamon Sullivan earlier traded times in the 100 metres freestyle in the National Aquatics Centre.
Bernard clocked a time of 47.20 seconds in winning the first semi-final, beating the previous mark of 47.24s set by Sullivan in the 4x100m relay earlier this week.
But Sullivan then went even quicker in the second semi-final, recording a time of 47.05 to reclaim the record and set up a mouthwatering final showdown on Thursday.
Another world record was broken in the women's 200m freestyle, Italian Federica Pellegrini taking gold in a time of 1:54.82 to lower her own mark set earlier in the week by 0.63s.
Slovenia's Sara Isakovic claimed the silver ahead of home favourite Jiaying Pang.
Yet another world record went in the women's 200m individual medley, Australian Stephanie Rice lowering her own mark by 0.47s.
Rice took gold in a time of 2:08.45, just finishing ahead of Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry with American Natalie Coughlin third.
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