Beijing: France's Alain Bernard made up for a week of heartache when he won swimming's blue riband 100m freestyle gold on Thursday, and China produced a new sensation as the Olympic spotlight briefly switched off Michael Phelps.
Little known Chinese Liu Zige smashed the world record in the women's 200m butterfly by 1.6sec, holding off fellow Chinese Jiao Liuyang and leaving Australia's world champion Jessicah Schipper third.
China continued to head the medal table with 19 gold in their challenge to supplant the United States, on 10 gold, as the world's most successful sporting nation.
Phelps, who has produced half of America's gold tally with five so far in his bid an unprecedented eight at a single games, took a back seat on the sixth day of the Olympics with only the men's 200m medley semi-finals to contest.
This brought the 100m free final to the fore and sweet success for Bernard who earlier in the week surrendered a commanding lead in the final leg of the men's 4x100m freestyle relay to be mowed down by US swimmer Jason Lezak.
It was a classic showdown between Bernard and Australian Eamon Sullivan who had battled for the world record all week, breaking it three times, and were never more than a hair's breadth apart in the final.
At the halfway mark, Sullivan led by 0.05sec and at the finish it was Bernard by 0.11sec, just outside the record Sullivan set in the semi-finals.
Du bounces back
There were a further three world records in the pool Thursday with Japanese breaststroke king Kosuke Kitajima in the 200m final and the Australian women's 4x200 freestyle relay team joining Liu.
China again surprised in the relay, finishing second ahead of the United States who had never lost this event at an Olympics.
It added to the frustration of American Katie Hoff who came to Beijing targetting six gold medals but has only one silver and two bronze after five events.
Tennis entered the quarter-finals with top seed Roger Federer complaining of a "ridiculous" schedule in which he has played six matches in just four days.
The top seed won his singles match against Tomas Berdych and had just one hour and 40 minutes to recover before returning for the doubles.
The event is Grand Slam-size but played in almost half the time -- eight days rather than a fortnight -- and most of the first day was lost to rain.
Chinese shooter Du Li, who disappointed in women's 10m air rifle on Saturday when under intense pressure to win the Games first gold medal for China, made amends in the women's 50m three positions event.
Katerina Emmons of the Czech Republic, who won the air rifle gold, was second.
South Korea, third on the medals table with Germany on six, expect further success in archery where Yun Ok-hee is desperate to win as a reward for coach Moon Hyung-chul who has put off thyroid cancer treatment to focus on the Games.
"When I heard the news in December about his cancer I was really worried about him but he keeps saying 'I'm okay, don't worry'. I really want to get a medal for him," she said.
There are 17 finals being contested on Thursday, with medals also up for grabs in archery, canoeing, equestrian, fencing, gymnastics, judo and wrestling.
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