Swimming: Hannah Miley misses out on podium place in Dubai

SCOTLAND'S Hannah Miley had to settle for a disappointing fourth place in the 400m individual medley at the World Short Course Championships in Dubai yesterday.

Mireia Belmonte Garcia took her second gold with victory in the final. The Spaniard set her second championship record of the day to touch in four minutes 24.21seconds, with Miley 5.56sec further back. Chinese duo Shiwen Ye and Xuanxu Li claimed silver and bronze respectively.

There was some medal joy for Briton Jemma Lowe, though, as she took silver in the 200metre butterfly. The 20-year-old finished 0.35sec behind winner Belmonte Garcia, who claimed the first gold of the day in a championship record two minutes 3.59sec. Petra Granlund of Sweden won the bronze with world record holder Zige Liu of China back in fifth.

China set the first world record of 2010 by winning the women's 4x200metre freestyle relay. The quartet of Qian Chen, Yi Tang, Jing Liu and Qianwei Zhu clocked 7:35.94, surpassing the previous mark of 7:38.90, set by Holland in 2008. Indeed the top four were all inside the old mark, Australia finishing second in 7:37.57, France third 7:38.33 and USA fourth in 7:38.42.

"Our goal was always to go for gold, but we didn't necessarily expect to come here and break the world record," Liu said, "but the atmosphere and the spectators were great."

Meanwhile, the United States saw their bid for a swathe of gold dented when their men's United States relay squad failed to finish on the podium.

Ryan Lochte, who had been expected to win as many as eight gold medals, enjoyed a dominant win in the 200m freestyle but, in the 400m free relay, the US fell behind after Nathan Adrian's dismal opening leg and Lochte had too much time to make up when he dived in for the anchor leg. "It's no one's fault," Lochte said. "We did our best."

The French team of Alain Bernard, Frederick Bousquet, Fabien Gilot and Yannick Agnel won in 3:04.78, with Russia a slim 0.04 behind and Cesar Cielo's Brazil third, 0.96 back.

Lochte will try to get back on the winning trail today in the 400m individual medley and the 800m free relay. Like every US athlete, there he wore the initials of Fran Crippen on his warm-up suit, in memory of the American swimmer who died during a race in the United Arab Emirates two months ago.