BEIJING -- Michael Phelps was back resting at the athletes' village when his U.S. teammates created some waves at the Water Cube, setting a world record in the 400-meter freestyle relay preliminaries Sunday night.
Their performance gave Phelps a solid chance at claiming a second Olympic gold medal when he joins the team for Monday morning's final.
"We definitely don't look at it like pressure on us," Ben Wildman-Tobriner said about keeping Phelps' bid for eight gold medals alive. "We look at it like being part of history."
Nathan Adrian, Cullen Jones, Wildman-Tobriner and Matt Grevers won their relay heat in 3 minutes, 12.23 seconds, erasing the old mark of 3:12.46 set by the U.S. at the 2006 Pan Pacific championships in Victoria, British Columbia.
Jones was part of the team that owned the previous record, becoming the first black swimmer to set a long-course world mark.
"A lot of people said this was the weaker of the two (freestyle) relays. The four of us set out to do something that not a lot of people thought we could do," he said. "We weren't afraid to feel the pain, which is why I'm so dizzy right now."
Besides qualifying first, Jones had the fastest 100 split of 47.61 seconds among his teammates and will join Phelps, Jason Lezak and Garrett Weber-Gale in the final.
The U.S. has not won the event at the Olympics since 1996, taking silver in 2000 and bronze in 2004. The Americans will be challenged by France, which qualified second in 3:12.36 and will be trying to win its first relay medal in 56 years.
Sprint star Alain Bernard and Fabien Gilot also were back at the village resting in preparation for joining Amaury Leveaux and Frederick Bousquet in the final.
Bernard was quoted as saying earlier in the week that the French would "smash" the Americans.
"There were words said ... but we know they're a force to be reckoned with and we're going to have to go against them," Jones said.
Meanwhile, Phelps took it easy about nine hours after winning his first gold of these games with a world record in the 400 individual medley. That launched him on his way toward breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in a single games.
The 23-year-old American superstar qualified fourth-fastest in the 200 free preliminaries, never leading his heat before touching in 1:46.48.
