BBC SPORT | Other Sports | First for female swimmers

BBC Sport's Bob Ballard reports on a day of drama at the World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka.

For the first time in 26 years at the World Swimming Championships and the first time ever for the women, Britain has a gold medal.

It was won in extraordinary circumstances, almost 15 hours after the final of the 4x200m freestyle relay.

In the race itself, Australia won gold, the United States silver and the British quartet of Nicola Jackson, Janine Belton, Karen Legg and Karen Pickering a bronze medal in a British record time of 7 mins 58.69.

But in the ensuing minutes, the USA were disqualified for an illegal take over from Cristina Teuscher on the second leg, and the Australians were penalised for jumping into the pool before the Italian had completed their swim.

Claims and counter claims, protests and yet more protests followed with the Americans, at first, being reinstated.

Tip-off

Britain and Australia objected along with the Japanese, who finished fifth in the actual race.

The FINA jury of appeal met this morning at 9.30 Fukuoka time (0130 BST) and took over a hour and a half to come up with their deliberation.

Britain's team celebrate their podium finish
The British team can now celebrate
BBC Radio 5 Live broke the news first after a tip from a FINA source at around 3.25 and the team discovered the news soon afterwards.

Britain's team manager Craig Hunter admitted to the BBC that he didn't sleep last week because of his anxiety over the verdict.

He had secretly harboured thoughts that the American's standing in world swimming would count heavily in their favour and against the GB protest.

But the decision by the Jury of Apeal was unanimous that the take-over tolerance was exceeded by Teuscher - 0.06 instead of the permitted 0.03, and that the timing equipment, contrary to the claims made by the USA delegation, was not faulty.

Back in action

In fact, in their words, "it worked perfectly".

So the new role call of medallists is Gold for Great Britain, Germany with the silver and a bronze for Japan.

British team boss Craig Hunter had a sleepless night
Two members of the 4x200 squad were back in action in the heats of the individual event - Nicola Jackson was 10th fastest, Karen Pickering 12th.

But the swim of the morning came from Zoe Baker in the 50 metres breaststroke.

The New Zealand-based swimmer clocked 31.27 in the heats, a new European record and she expects to get close to Penny Heynes world record of 30.88 in the semi-finals.