By Bryn Palmer, Sydney

British swimming was looking to host nation Australia for inspiration as the final day of competition in the Sydney pool failed to produce any belated medals, confirming the team's worst Olympics performance since 1936.

The last remaining individual hope, Scot Alison Sheppard, finished a creditable seventh in the 50m women's freestyle final behind flying Dutchwoman Inge de Bruijn, who collected her third gold medal of the Games.

The women's and men's 4x100m medley relay teams meanwhile, who both set new British records at the semi-final stage, found themselves outclassed in the finals, finishing seventh and eighth respectively.

"We have come eighth in the final race, which just about sums up our Games really," commented James Hickman, who swam the butterfly leg for the men's team alongside Neil Willey, Darren Mew and Sion Brinn.

"We need prizes, not personal bests," he admitted. "The public wants medals and we haven't got any. It is just not good enough."

The man charged with ensuring that come Athens in 2004, Britain have some genuine contenders at Olympic level is Australian Bill Sweetenham, who replaces the out-going Derek Snelling as Performance Director for the next four years, starting next month.

"I will be very interested to find out what he knows about Australian swimming and what they have done so successfully over the last 20 years," said Hickman.

"They have had their Institute of Sport in Canberra for a long time and that is the way we need to go.

"I am sure we can learn a lot from these people and hopefully get ourselves in a position to win some medals next time around.

"We are doing a lot of things right and the team as a whole has improved, but we are not getting better as individuals."

For Glaswegian Sheppard, qualifying for the 50m freestyle final already represented her best performance in her fourth Olympics to date, but she was unable to improve on her semi final showing as she clocked 25.45, outside her personal best of 25.12 and slower than her 25.32 effort yesterday.

"I am 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. It is a real confidence booster getting to the final, and to come seventh is a big step."

De Bruijn, 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 Dutchwoman, who also collected the 100m butterfly and freestyle titles, and a silver in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

Britain's women's medley relay team started promisingly with a strong opening backstroke leg from 18-year-old Katy Sexton, but were unable to maintain the pace through Heidi Earp, Susan Rolph and Karen Pickering to finish seventh behind a dominant American team, who took gold in a new world record time of 3:58.30.

"I think we raced really well," said Pickering on Saturday. "We knocked so much off our time, it was always going to be hard to beat.

"It was a totally new experience for Heidi, but with the experience she and Katy got today, I am sure they will go from strength to strength."

The USA also produced a new world record of 3:33.73 secs in the men's 4x100m medley relay, the final event of the swimming programme, as Britain finished last in 3:40.19, six tenths outside the own national record the quartet set yesterday.

One of the most anticipated contests of the Games saw home favourite Kieren Perkins narrowly fail 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 in 14:48.33, over five seconds ahead of Perkins in 14:53.59.