Team USA collected five medals on Sunday to bring the week’s total to 36 – 20 gold, 13 silver and three bronze. Both the total medal and gold medal counts tied the 1978 world championship team.

Competing in his 16th race of the week, Phelps set his fourth individual world record of the week in the 400m IM, leading from the onset. Ryan Lochte (Daytona Beach, Fla.), who was swimming next to Phelps in lane five, caught up in the backstroke leg, but Phelps turned it on in the freestyle lead to finish in 4:06.22, just four-hundredths ahead of the previous world record of 4:06.26 that he set at the 2004 Olympic Games.
Lochte was more than three seconds behind Phelps in 4:09.74 for the silver medal – his third of the meet – with Luca Marin of Italy touching in third place (4:09.88).

Phelps rewrote the record books with his performance this week in Melbourne, shattering four individual world records in his five events in addition to one relay world record.

Hoff put together her own pile of records this week, capturing her first individual world record Sunday after swimming on the 800m freestyle relay that set the world mark on Thursday. In the 400m IM, 17-year-old Hoff trailed by eight-tenths after the butterfly, but used a strong backstroke leg to pull ahead of the field. By the 250-mark, she led by almost three seconds and finished in 4:32.89, breaking Ukranian Yana Klochkova’s seven-year-old world record of 4:33.59 by seven-tenths. Hoff’s time obliterated the rest of the field, as Russia’s Yana Martynova was the silver medalist (4:40.14), and Stephanie Rice of Australia earned the bronze (4:41.19).

Team USA continues on to Sydney, Australia Monday where it will compete in the third Mutual of Omaha Duel in the Pool at the Sydney Olympic Aquatic Center. The Duel will be broadcast on NBC on April 21-22, 2007.