It's still a splash a minute poolside

Easiest job in the world? Covering swimming at these Olympics. You go the pool, sensational things happen, you write them down, you go home again. Day in, day out. They do it, we write it.

Australia was happy again last night and that made the job a little easier still. After two days without gold medals in swimming they won a pair of them and the people who searched our bags at every checkpoint were even friendlier and the results service was even swifter and the kookaburras sang an even sweeter tune.

Good news first from Susie O'Neill, scourge of the drug-taking community, darling of the Aussie nation. O'Neill, who has been hinting at retirement all week held off a late push from Slovakia's Martina Moravcova to win the 200-metres freestyle in one minute 58.24 seconds, just 0.08 seconds ahead of her rival.

She came back later and swam the fastest semi-final time in the 200-metres butterfly heats, an event in which she is the reigning Olympic champion.

Then Ian Thorpe, 17 years old and breaking young nations' hearts already, turned up with a bunch of flowers behind his back. He swam the first leg of the 4x200 metres relay and set things up for a convincing win and a world record. Thorpe et al finished five and a half seconds in front of the Americans. Nothing says sorry quite like beating Americans.

Australia blushed and apologised to Thorpe for being so distant the night before. No, no said Ian Thorpe, it was my fault. And so on.

Thorpe's first-leg time of 1:46.03 was sufficient to give the home team a three second advantage. Michael Klim and Todd Pearson stretched the lead to more than four seconds before Bill Kirby, struggling slightly, brought them home 1.74 seconds under their own previous world record.

"That was our goal for the race," said Klim afterwards, "to get out fast and stun the opposition". It was the first time Australia had won the event since 1956 and it restored Thorpe to the bosom of the nation.

Thorpe has three gold medals and a silver to hang over his desk when he's doing his homework. He can look forward to swimming in at least two more Olympics.

Maybe not. By then he will be pretty familiar with Pieter van den Hoogenband. The Dutchman's business card will announce him as "Nemesis of Ian Thorpe".

The Dutchman pocketed his second world record of the Games last night and looks like becoming the most celebrated individual swimmer of the event.

Having filched Thorpe's thunder and his 200-metre freestyle world record on Sunday and equalling it on Monday when he beat Thorpe in the final he produced another sensational swim to knock over the 100 metres freestyle mark.

"I thought he'd swim fast, but I expected him to do that tomorrow (in the final)," his coach Jacco Verhaeren said. "He's swimming so easy at the moment, it's hard for him to swim slow."

News of a Dutchman who can't actually swim slow will discombobulate (to use a technical term) competitors in this evening's big event, the men's 100 freestyle final in which seven of the 10 all-time best performers in the event's history race.

Before van den Hoogenbrand's revolution this week, Michael Klim, Gary Hall and Alexander Popov would also have been ranked as almost co-favourites. They may now be drowned in the Dutchman's wash. Popov had come to Sydney hoping to win the title for an unprecedented third time.

Last night's feats brought the tally of world records set in the Homebush Bay pool, after just four days of the eight-day swimming programme, to 10 broken and one equalled. The press centre expects to achieve a new record for use of superlatives sometime on Friday.

This has been a novel Olympics in terms of emerging swimming nations. The Dutch medals have been surprising enough (especially to Ian Thorpe), the Italians grow ever more influential and yesterday Yana Klochkova of Ukraine picked up her second Olympic individual medley gold, winning the 200 event after her world record heroics in the 400 event on Sunday.

Tom Malchow, silver medallist at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, gave the Americans another gold (their sixth at the pool) with a hardworking performance in the men's 200 metres butterfly.

Four days gone. Four days left. The Australians are back on their feet and eyeballing the Americans again. The Dutch, The Italians and the Ukrainians are minding their own business. We just keep writing it.