KEY POINTS:
Bouncing the grandchildren on the knee, this will be some story to tell - although Glenn Snyders hopes that won't be for a while yet.
New Zealand's 4 x 100m medley team shared historic water in the final race of the Olympic swim meet at the Water Cube yesterday. As Michael Phelps bagged a record eighth gold medal with his United States team setting another world record, the New Zealanders came home a fine fifth in a national record 3m 33.39s.
The quartet of backstroker Daniel Bell, breaststroker Snyders, butterfly specialist Corney Swanepoel and Cameron Gibson anchoring the freestyle leg had set a record in their heat and trimmed it by a further .70s yesterday.
"We're really happy," Gibson said. "It's only the third time we've swum as a New Zealand team."
And he hoped this would lead on to better things.
"I'd like to say it isn't the high point, I'd like to say we can move on, hopefully onwards and upwards."
Gibson and Swanepoel were in the team at the Athens Games four years ago while Bell, after winning titles at the world junior championships in Mexico a few weeks ago, is the newcomer.
Bell, disappointed not to have gone under his heat time yesterday, was rapt at the experience of his first Olympics and has had his appetite whetted.
"Hopefully, I have a long road ahead of me and maybe one day I can win an Olympic gold. But being in that race was a great experience."
Three lanes across the Americans were carving their names in the history books as Phelps broke Mark Spitz's 36-year-old record of seven golds in Munich.
Spitz's were all world records; Phelps had seven world and one Olympic record.
Snyders acknowledged the significance of the day in world swimming terms. "You never know he might be the only person for 100 years, or someone else might come along and get nine," he said.
"I guess in about 20 or 30 years' time you can tell the story, but I don't think I'll be telling my grandchildren for a while," the 21-year-old Snyders quipped.
In a sense the US win was an anticlimactic end to a sensational meet. If Phelps was to be stopped it would have happened before yesterday.
He may or may not have touched first to win the 100m butterfly on Saturday, but he got the verdict and the rest was largely straightforward.
Briefly the US were in danger of spoiling the celebrations when breaststroker Brendon Hansen touched third, but Phelps pulled them through on the butterfly, regaining the lead on the third leg for freestyler Jason Lezak to push Phelps to immortality and the team to another world record.
There was relatively little grandstanding from the Americans at the finish, unlike the world record they set in the 4 x 200m freestyle when they carried on like cut cats. It was as if there was an inevitability that the eight golds were Phelps' destiny.
His mother, Debbie, and sisters Hillary and Whitney stood tearfully in the stands and as he had done seven previous times, their kid brother handed his bouquet to one of them.
"I don't think it'll ever get beaten," Gibson said. "He's so versatile, so talented."
Time will have the final say on that, but for now eight is simply great.
