By Bryn Palmer, Sydney

Britain's last hope of an individual swimming medal in Sydney disappeared on Saturday as Alison Sheppard finished seventh behind Dutch sensation Inge de Bruijn, who snatched her third gold medal of the Games, in the 50m women's freestyle.

Sheppard, who was competing in her first Olympic final at her fourth Games, clocked 25.45 seconds, outside her personal best of 25.12 and slower than her semi-final time of 25.32 yesterday.

De Bruijn, 27, who slashed quarter of a second off her own world record mark in her semi-final win, swam the second fastest time in history to win in 24.32, ahead of Swede Therese Alshammar in 24.51 and American Dana Torres, who took bronze in 24.63.

It completed a stunning Olympics for the 27-year-old Dutch woman, who also collected the 100m butterfly and freestyle titles, and a relay silver.

Glaswegian Sheppard, who improved dramatically on previous best 25th-place finish in Barcelona, was relatively satisfied with the outcome.

"I'm a little bit disappointed by my place and time, but even my best time would not have got a medal today," she said.

"The experience of the whole thing has been amazing though and I tried to enjoy it today. I was going well for the first 25 metres but at the end I guess I just wasn't fast enough.

"I've made an Olympic final and I've got to be happy with that. There was a lot more pressure in the final than the semi-final."

Meanwhile, home favourite Kieren Perkins narrowly failed in his bid to follow Dawn Fraser into Australian Olympic history with a third successive gold medal in the men's 1500m freestyle.

Perkins, who won the event in Barcelona and Atlanta, had to settle for silver behind compatriot and pre-Games favourite Grant Hackett, who stormed back to form to take gold after a hitherto mediocre Olympics.

Hackett won in 14:48.33, over five seconds ahead of Perkins in 14:53.59, with both American bronze medallist Chris Thompson and fourth place Russian Alexei Filipets also both going under 15 minutes.

In the women's 4x100m medley relay final, the British team of Katy Sexton, Heidi Earp, Susan Rolph and Karen Pickering finished seventh behind a dominant American team, who took gold in a new world record time of 3:58.30 ahead of Australia and Japan, who claimed the bronze.

The quartet, who set a new national record in the semi-final yesterday of 4:07.52, started strongly with Sexton turning third after a strong opening backstroke leg, but ended narrowly outside their record time on 4:07.61.

The British men's 4x100m medley relay team of Neil Willy, Darren Mew, James Hickman and Sion Brinn fared little better in their final, finishing eight and last in 3:40.19, 0.6 outside their own national record set yesterday.

The USA again demonstrated their awesome depth of talent with Lenny Krayzelburg, Ed Moses, Ian Crocker and Gary Hall Jr beating the old world record by over a second to set a new mark of 3:33.73 secs, the 15th world best the Sydney Aquatic Centre has witnessed during the Games.

Australia took silver with Germany clinching the bronze.