KEY POINTS:
BEIJING - A jubilant New Zealand medley relay team insist they can lift another notch for an Olympic swimming medal bid tomorrow after making history at the Water Cube.
The 4x100m team of Daniel Bell, Glenn Snyders, Corney Swanepoel and Cameron Gibson became the first New Zealand relay combination to make an Olympic final last night as they qualified sixth fastest for the medal race.
Out in lane eight, they carved almost five seconds off their own New Zealand record, swimming three minutes 34.09 seconds to finish third in their heat.
They were only 1.34sec behind heat winners the United States, who rested superstar Michael Phelps but qualified fastest in a time of 3min 32.75sec, ahead of Australia and Japan who led heat one.
Snyders rated it an "unbelievable" feeling to be the first Kiwi combination to swim for an Olympic medal.
"When we're together we're just awesome," Snyders said.
"A medal's never out of the question, if we all step up who knows what could happen. But we're just all happy that we made the final and we'll take it from there."
Rookie Olympian Bell, 18, led off with a personal best 54.52sec backstroke leg to have New Zealand well placed fifth at the first change.
Breaststroker Snyders and butterfly swimmer Swanepoel, who made semifinals in their individual events, each swam slick middle legs to leave New Zealand third behind the US and Russia going into the final change.
Gibson finished strongly in the freestyle, his long reach touching New Zealand just ahead of South Africa, Italy and France who were all within 0.70sec.
Swanepoel could barely speak with exhaustion at the end, having missed out on the 100m butterfly final earlier in the day.
"Everybody stepped up and showed a lot of guts and we couldn't have wished for anything more out of the heat swim," Swanepoel said.
England-based Gibson, who won bronze in the 200m backstroke at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, said they didn't believe the job was finished yet as they spend Saturday recovering before their big day.
"For sure, the team's going to have no problem coping with that," he said.
"It's an honour to swim in a team with these guys, they're great guys and when it counts everybody mans up."
For Bell, it was worth the wait for his only event of the Games.
"It's an amazing feeling.... seeing Corney touch third and Gibbo dive in the water, we were all going crazy cheering him on," Bell said.
"You don't have any energy but something like that brings out the best in you."
The relay team emulated Moss Burmester (fourth in the 200m butterfly) as the only New Zealand finalists in Beijing, 12 years since the previous Kiwis to contest an Olympic medal race, Danyon Loader and Anna Simcic in Atlanta.
Earlier, Swanepoel (100m butterfly) and Melissa Ingram (200 backstroke) ended New Zealand's individual programme at the Games when they were eliminated in the semifinals.
Both returned creditable results but couldn't break their national records set in the heats; Swanepoel finishing 12th in 52.01sec and Ingram 11th in 2min 09.70sec.
- NZPA
