BANGKOK, Aug 13: The United States demonstrated their superiority in the pool at the World University Games on Monday with two more victories that took their haul of swimming golds to eight.

But they lost their monopoly on the relay events when Japan just squeezed them into second place in the women’s 4x100-metres medley.

The surprise result ended the US hopes of a clean sweep in the relays after three golds in a row.

Japan set a new games’ record of 4:03.96 – giving them victory by only 0.85 seconds.

Despite the upset, the US swimmers proved that they are among the highest quality athletes involved in all 17 sports at the University Games.

Patrick Mellors, from the University of Virginia, secured gold in the men’s 400-metres ahead of compatriot Alex Vanderkaay.

Adam Ritter added the men’s 200-metre freestyle gold to his 100-metres silver.

Also in the pool, Swiss star Flavia Rigamonti, a world championship silver medallist, added the 1,500-metre freestyle gold to her earlier success in the 800-metres.

With one day of competition remaining for the swimmers, Japan and Germany have four golds to trail the US in the medals table, with Ukraine close behind with three.

On the track, Egypt’s Amr Seowd won the high-profile men’s 200-metre final ahead of Julius Leigh from South Africa and Tomoya Kamiyama of Japan.

In further examples of Ukraine’s impressive performance at the games, Iryna Shtangyeyeva took the women’s 200-metres after Olga Saladukha had won the women’s triple jump.

The shooting tournament came to an end on Monday with Russia collecting another four gold medals in a sport that many national teams believe will have an undue influence on the overall medals table.

Shooting has been included for the first time at the University Games and has given out 40 golds over four days – compared with men’s basketball, which will award a single team medal after 11 days of hard slog.

Russia’s young top gun Leonid Ekimov, 19, again stood out with a gold in the men’s 50-metres pistol to accompany his earlier 10-metre air pistol victory.

Russia, with a total of 11 golds, has made best use of the shooting events, with China collecting nine golds and Germany four.

Hosts Thailand also benefited, collecting two shooting golds on a day that also brought delight to local supporters with two Thai gold medals on the final day of the taekwondo.

Korea emerged as clear winners of the taekwondo event with seven golds.

Tuesday sees the final day of athletics and the start of golf at the 24th World University Games, which continue until Aug 18.—Agencies

Medal standings

(Tabulate under gold, silver, bronze, total):

Russia 21 13 24 58

China 17 18 14 49

Ukraine 14 15 12 41

Japan 11 13 7 31

South Korea 11 9 13 33

Germany 10 5 7 22

United States 8 8 8 24

Thailand 7 7 2 16

Italy 5 4 6 15

Kazakhstan 5 3 4 12

Taiwan 3 2 5 10

Austria 3 2 1 6

Canada 3 1 6 10

Iran 3 1 3 7

Turkey 2 3 4 9

Hungary 2 3 0 5

Belarus 2 2 5 9

Australia 2 2 3 7

Switzerland 2 0 1 3

Finland 2 0 0 2

Britain 1 3 2 6

Slovakia 1 2 2 5

Cyprus 1 2 0 3

South Africa 1 2 0 3

Czech Republic 1 1 2 4

Egypt 1 1 0 2

Morocco 1 1 0 2

Portugal 1 1 0 2

Slovenia 1 1 0 2

North Korea 1 0 2 3

Lithuania 1 0 2 3

Romania 1 0 2 3

India 1 0 1 2

Latvia 1 0 1 2

Cuba 1 0 1 2

Algeria 1 0 0 1

Bulgaria 1 0 0 1