The Americans scored a resounding upset over the French 4 X 100m freestyle relay team in Beijing on Sunday night, winning gold by just six hundredths of a second and bringing all-star American swimmer Michael Phelps one step closer to his goal of besting Mark Spitz’s previous Olympic record of 8 gold medals, set at the Munich Games in 1972.

The highly anticipated event was preceded by dramatic controversy, as French swimmer Alain Bernard promised to “smash” the Americans. “The Americans?” Bernard said. “We’re going to smash them. That’s what we came for.”

Not quite.

The American time of 3 minutes, 8.24 seconds set a new world record. Although Phelps set an individual 100m record during the relay, it was 32-year-old Jason Lezak whose anchoring performance sealed the victory, besting Bernard by mere hundredths of a second.