South Africa's golden boys led Olympic news in Greece and America after Roland Schoeman, Lyndon Ferns, Darian Townsend and Ryk Neethling broke the world 4x100m relay record for gold in the biggest upset of the Athens Olympics so far.

"South Africa's relay men cause upset of the Olympic Games," crowed the Olympic early morning update on national Greek TV station Alpha. The station showed the entire relay, then focused on the jubilation of the foursome at the edge of the pool where Ferns, who turned 21 last month, stood on the block flexing his muscles and waving the South African flag.

"South Africans dashed Michael Phelps' hopes of winning eight Olympic gold medals in major upset," lamented CNN's Olympic update. Phelps came to Athens with aspirations of beating fellow American Mark Sptiz's Olympic record of seven golds at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

There was one heart-stopping moment when Ferns, in his wild excitement, reached way down from the block to give Neethling a high-five and almost fell forward into the pool, but he was grabbed and steadied by Schoeman at the last moment. Fina rules stipulate disqualification if team-members jump into the water to celebrate victory with the anchor swimmer.

Ferns' jubilation was compounded by the fact that he made it into the team after a dramatic swim-off time trial in Athens last week in which he displaced Karl Thaning and Eugene Botes. The youngster, who grew up in Marble Hall, Northern Province, recently joined Schoeman and Neethling at Tucson University in Arizona.

Schoeman and Neethling, who have been low-profile icons among soccer, rugby and cricket-mad South Africans, have made huge sacrifices in their commitment and spent thousands of hours in the pool over the last decade to peak at these Games.

"These guys are fast, very fast," was all team coach Graham Hill, who trains Townsend, would say after the time trial. Townsend, only 19 years old, needed to crack well under 50 seconds for his leg to keep the South Africans' hopes afloat ? and he held the pressure with the strength of a young Atlas.

They stunned everyone inside and outside of the pool when they became instant heroes by winning the first Olympic gold medal for their country with a world record three minutes 13.17 seconds.

They devastated the fancied Americans and Australians, who boosted their teams with Phelps and Ian Thorpe. But the South Africans left them in their wake as Schoeman, with the fastest reaction time of 0.65 seconds off the block, set the pace with his 48.17 seconds.

Ferns was quicker than Phelps (48.74) in his leg with 48.13 seconds, and Townsend kept his momentum going with 48.96, then big Neethling opened up with a spectacular 47.91 to beat Australia's world record of 3:13.67 set at Sydney 2000.

"We did it!" screamed Ferns from the starting block, thumping a fist to his heart. "We are number one!"

The triumph was South Africa's fourth gold medal since re-admission to the Olympics in Barcelona 1992, adding to the two won by swimmer Penny Heyns in Atlanta and the marathon gold by Josia Thugwane at the same Olympics.

"We're fast," raved Schoeman afterwards. "Real fast. It's taken 10 years to do this. We've always believed we could beat the Americans and the Aussies. Now we've done it. We knew we could do this. There's still a few days left, so watch out. We're not finished yet."

"That was fantastic," enthused Neethling. "Brilliant. I'll never forget this day as long as I live. Tell South Africa we did it for them!"

The foursome stunned their opposition and sent ripples through the swimming world with their semifinal victory in the morning that was just off the world mark. They surged to the world record in the final to add to the Olympic success of Penny Heyns, who won two breaststroke golds at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.