INQUIRER Sports

BEIJING -- America's sporting relations with Olympic Games hosts China went into deep freeze in the Beijing heat on Wednesday as superstar swimmer Michael Phelps rewrote the record books.

As Phelps won his fourth and fifth golds of the Games to take his career total to an unmatched 11, accusations were flying over dirty tricks at a tense women's team gymnastics competition.

By the day's end, China still led the medals table with 17 gold in a total of 27; the USA has 10 gold out of 29 in total.

At the Water Cube, Phelps set a world record to clinch the 200 meters butterfly title before leading the United States to another record-shattering victory in the 4x200m freestyle relay.

"I am at a loss for words right now," said Phelps, now the greatest ever Olympian.

"I just keep saying to myself 'greatest Olympian of all time' over and over. It hasn't sunk in yet, but it's a great thing to hear people say."

Phelps's 200m butterfly time of 1min 52.03sec shaved six-hundredths of a second off the world mark of 1:52.09 he set in winning the world title in Melbourne last year.

The 23-year-old has now moved past Olympic icons Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz and Larysa Latynina, who all won nine golds in their careers.

He had barely stepped off the medal podium before he returned for the relay, leading off a US team that clocked 6:58.56 - crushing the previous world mark of 7:03.24 set by a US squad at last year's world championships.

If Phelps can win all eight of his Beijing events, he will surpass the record of seven gold medals at one Games set by US swimmer Spitz at Munich in 1972.

Later Wednesday, Phelps cruised to the sixth-fastest time in the heats of the 200m individual medley and still has the butterfly and 4x100m medley relay to race.

Elsewhere in the pool, America's Natalie Coughlin added the 200m medley bronze to her 100m backstroke gold and relay silver.

Meanwhile, the US women's gymnastics team blamed stadium officials for distracting one of their athletes who went on to make crucial mistakes that destroyed their gold medal hopes.

China won after Alicia Sacramone fell off the balance beam then slipped over during the floor exercise, opening the way for the home team to post a narrow 2.375 point victory.

US team coordinator Martha Karolyi said officials at Beijing's National Indoor Stadium had disrupted Sacramone's preparations for the beam.

"First they called her name up, then they did not even put her name up even though the Chinese had finished ... (it was) totally unusual holding," she said.

Karolyi insisted the world champion US team would have won gold if Sacramone had not become unsettled although hours later USA Gymnastics toned down their criticism.

In baseball, the US slumped to an 8-7 defeat to South Korea in their tournament opener while the men's soccer team failed to make the quarter-finals after losing 2-1 to Nigeria.

Ronda Rousey won a first ever Olympic medal by an American woman in Olympic judo when she claimed bronze in the 70kg division.

The US women's basketball team continued their smooth progress towards the final with a 97-41 win over Mali.

In tennis, Serena and Venus Williams stayed on course for a final meeting with last 16 wins over Alize Cornet of France and Victoria Azarenka of Belarus respectively.

James Blake also reached the quarter-finals with a straight sets win over Gilles Simon but now comes up against top seed Roger Federer for place in the last eight.

China's champions Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng ended Howard Bach and Bob Malaythong's historic badminton campaign at the quarter-final stages.

Cyclist Kristin Armstrong took gold for the USA in the women's Olympic time trial to add to her 2006 world title.