Thorpe smiles on the medal podium

But the flying Dutchman, Pieter van den Hoogenband, was in terrific form too as he took the Netherlands team from out of the medals to silver in the last 100m of the relay.

Their showdown in the 200m freestyle, as it was at the Olympics, looks set to be the race of the eight days of competition in Japan.

From a British point of view, it was a day that had started so brightly but ended with mainly disappointment.

The high point came in the first semi-final of the men's 50m freestyle.

Mark Foster, so often the nearly man at major meetings, has a genuine shot at a medal in Monday's final after setting the third fastest time of 22.19secs.

Shot in the arm

Only joint Olympic champion Anthony Ervin of America and the afore-mentioned Van den Hoogenband went quicker and less than two tenths of a second separated all three.

This could be just the shot in the arm that the 31-year-old needs and the catalyst for a better week for the British team than it had been in Sydney.

Georgina Lee will have to concentrate on helping the medley relay team to success later in the week, and Jaime King has the 200m breaststroke in her sights now after both fell at the semi-finals hurdle in their events.

Lee, ninth from the heats of the 200m butterfly, faded badly in her semi to finish 5th in the race and 10th overall in a time of 2mins 11.07secs - a chastening experience for someone with such high hopes of a medal.

Gold medal

King's expectations in the 100 breaststroke were more modest. A British record would have been nice, but 14th in 71.04secs was not what she had in mind.

One other gold medal was settled on day one in the Marine Messe.

Olympic champion Yana Klochkova took the 400m individual medley title as expected.

The Olympic champion in the 200m and 400m medley won her first World Championship title in 4mins 36.98secs.