II IS 80 years since Britain won an Olympic medal in gymnastics but two teenagers yesterday offered hope of ending that drought. Louis Smith, a 19-year-old from Cambridge, finished fifth in the men's pommel horse qualifying competition, becoming the first Britain to reach the final of this event since 1920.

And as he progressed, teammate Daniel Keatings, 18, from Kettering, reached the 24-man all-round final. Keatings and Smith train at the same gym in Cambridgeshire.

It had been anticipated that the most that either could take out of the Games was experience ahead of London 2012. But Keatings and Smith will now line up for their respective finals on Thursday and Sunday.

Interviewed before the Games, their coach Paul Hall had said: “They are under no illusions. They are going to Beijing with the target of going through a clean routine. Anything that happens as a result of that will be a bonus. It's not a goal of ours to get a medal, but they have been on the world circuit for over a year and produced results that have put them in the top eight in many competitions. So there's always chances.”

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Louis Smith admitted afterwards: “It was running through my head, 'clean routine, clean routine' and I must have tensed up a bit, but I just got through my routine".

Elsewhere in Beijing, observers were anticipating world records in the pool. Improvements in timing, technology and overall standards are beginning to take effect.

The time in which Stephanie Rice of Australia won silver in the 400m medley at the world championships a year ago would have placed her 18th in the heats here. Michael Phelps set an Olympic record 0.44sec quicker than the time he swam to win gold in the 400m medley in 2004. In the heats of the 100m breaststroke, British champion Chris Cook made the semi-fi-nals in 15th with 1:00.71, a tenth of a second away from what it took to win a medal in 2004.

Libby Trickett, favourite for the 100m butterfly, said: “It’s a lot faster being at night, and being an Olympic event it’s going to be tougher.” NBC televi-sion, the Olympic broadcaster, insisted tradition be turned on its head, with finals held in the morning here to coincide with prime-time viewing in America and interest in Phelps’ bid to beat Mark Spitz’s Olympic record of seven golds. Science suggests peak performance is more likely later in the day.

T e c h n o l o g y has played its part too. Since February, when the Speedo LZR Racer costume, with high compression factors and polyurethane panels d e s i g n e d b y N A S A , w a s launched, 51 world records have fallen.

Scraping into the finals for Britain were Hannah Miley in the 400m medley and the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team. “Swimming has moved on,” said performance director Michael Scott afterwards. “I was sitting next to the Denmark team and their man dropped from 3:48 to 3:45. It’s a fast time. You would have expected that to make the final but he missed out.”