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There was so much drama, the race will enter the annals as one of the greatest races the Olympic Games has ever seen in any sport.

Despite pulling out a blistering 47.24sec swim in his lead-off leg for Australia, slashing 0.26sec off the world mark owned by hulking Frenchman Alain Bernard, it was American Jason Lezak's amazing final leg that lifted the US to a gold medal which has the world talking.

Trailing the French team, who were handing off to the former world record holder by 0.59sec going into the final 100m, the veteran sprinter produced blinding 46.06sec split to mow down Bernard in the final metres of the race.

Even accounting for the advantage of a relay changeover, it was a time that put Lezak in uncharted waters.

The US won the relay in 3min 08.24, an amazing 3.99sec ahead of the world record they set the previous nights in the heats, a fingertip ahead of the French (3:08.32), with the Sullivan-led Australian team, also including veteran Ashley Callus, Andrew Lauterstein and Matt Targett, grabbing the bronze medal.

Never has a collective of 32-men across eight teams swum so fast.

Incredibly, the top five teams went under the world record and the roar which lifted the roof off the Cube as Lezak hit the world was almost entirely directed toward the US's lead-off swimmer Michael Phelps whose dream of eight gold medals in Beijing was kept alive. And everybody in the pool and watching on television knew it.

Phelps himself was amazing, swimming in Sullivan's wake. He handed over having swum 47.51sec, only .01sec outside the world record as it stood before the gun, and he's not a 100m specialist and is not swimming the individual event.

The performances of Sullivan and Lezak sets up a blistering showdown in the men's 100m freestyle, of which the heats will be swum tonight.

Lezak said he rated Sullivan as the man to beat going into what looms as a super 100m freestyle, but the West Australian knows the job ahead was going to be tough despite his form.

"Obviously, with all the splits that were done, there were fast times as well,'' Sullivan said.

Sullivan is now in exactly the same position as three-time Olympian Michael Klim was in at the Sydney Olympics.

Klim broke the world record swimming the lead-off leg for Australia in the team's famous "guitar strumming" upset victory over the US in the 4x100m freestyle relay, only to finish fourth in the individual 100m final.

Sullivan said he would be drawing on the advice of Klim before tackling his individual 100m freestyle race.

"I'm trying to not get too ahead of myself, there's still a heat, semi-final and final to go,'' Sullivan.

"Obviously with what happened to Michael in Sydney, I'm probably going to have a few words to him about what not to do and what to do.

Callus, a member of Australia's gold-medal winning team in Sydney 2000, pushed himself so hard during the relay that he felt sick afterwards.

"It's just something that happens to me immediately after a hard race,'' Callus said.

"I tend to feel a little bit sick, it's nothing out oft he ordinary. But when you go through times like that, we are very close, probably a bit closer than what we were in Sydney.

While his bid for eight gold dodged a bullet, or a rocket, yesterday, Lezak said Phelps did not have to thank his teammates as they were "doing it for Team USA".

"We were going out there to swim a 400m, not a 4x100m, so we were a team and it had nothing o do with individuals out there and we came through.

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