'That's the way it goes,' team mate consoles Phelps

MELBOURNE, Apr 1 (Reuters) Michael Phelps' team mates tried their best to offer crumbs of comfort to the US colossus after his bid for eight golds went up in smoke because of a botched changeover in the medley relay heats.

Precious little had gone wrong for the all-conquering US swimming team and talisman Phelps at Rod Laver Arena this week, but a seemingly innocuous morning relay heat was to bring disaster.

Phelps had looked a good bet to win eight golds with six already in the bag and just the 400 individual medley and 4x100 medley relay to go.

The 21-year-old from Michigan qualified comfortably in the fastest time for the individual final today and was rested for the relay heats, knowing Ryan Lochte, Scott Usher, Ian Crocker and Neil Walker would have plenty in hand.

All went well when 200 backstroke gold medallist Lochte put them ahead at the first changeover, but when breaststroker Scott Usher closed on the wall, Crocker, who had lost the 100 fly final to Phelps by a fingertip on Sunday, got it all wrong.

He dived in before Usher had hit the wall and Phelps' hopes of an unprecedented haul of gold were sunk.

The quartet finished the race and looked up at the scoreboard as replays repeatedly showed the contentious changeover, and their heads dropped when the 'DSQ' on the result caption confirmed the unthinkable.

UNLUCKY EXCHANGE Crocker had left the blocks 0.04 before Usher touched, one hundredth of a second outside the permitted difference.

''This is the way swimming goes sometimes,'' said Walker, who brought the team home in the final freestyle leg.

''It's pretty exciting even in the preliminaries because every team out there is so fast, you don't want to be slow. You want to take every advantage you can, and the starts that's part of it.

''It was just an unlucky exchange, that's all it is.

Sometimes it falls your way sometimes it doesn't.'' The team had been under instruction from their coaches to take no risks to ensure qualification for the final event of the championships on Sunday night.

''Yeah that's the way it is in the morning, to have conservative changeovers,'' Walker added.

''I think the way Scott Usher was coming in and Ian's wind-up was conservative, but the touch and the take-off were a little too much.'' Walker said Crocker's anxiety to take off early was understandable in the light of his tense defeat against Phelps in the 100 butterfly final the previous night.

Crocker went into the final as favourite but was beaten by a fingertip in a repeat of the 2004 Olympics final.

Although the pair are rivals, they are also close friends and Phelps voluntarily gave up his place to Crocker in the medley relay final at Athens.

''A little of bit over-excitement possibly, he had an awesome race last night with Michael Phelps and to get back up the next morning it's tough to do.

''It's just the way it goes, I'm sure the take-off difference was a few one hundredths of a second at most but you only need one and that amount of time is so incomprehensible, you can never really plan that.

''It is disappointing, Michael was doing something no one has ever done before and I think everyone is going to be disappointed, Michael included, but he is going to see that this is the way it happens sometimes.'' It was the first time that any US team had failed to make the final of any relay since the world championships started in 1973.

Reuters SAM GC1007