• Sada Jacobson wins the Silver in Fencing with Sabre.

Sada Jacobson, the silver medal winner? Come fall, Jacobson — who fell behind 8-5 to Russia’s Sofiya Velikaya in the semifinals before rebounding for a 15-11 victory — will be cracking open the case books at the University of Michigan Law School. We wish Sada the best of luck in law school, and we hope she can lunge her way through J.J White's commercial transactions class with the same grace she used to take apart Velikaya.

• Jason Lezak wins the Gold in men swimming's 400 m Relay.

If Michael Phelps goes on to win eight gold medals in the Olympic swimming competition at the Water Cube, he will owe a huge debt of gratitude to teammate Jason Lezak.

In one of the greatest anchor legs in swimming history, Lezak reeled in boastful Frenchman Alain Bernard in the final 50 meters to bring the United States home to a breathtaking victory in the 4x100 freestyle relay to provide a riveting finish to Monday morning’s program.

At the start of the final leg, there appeared to be no way the 32-year-old Lezak could catch Bernard, the world-record holder for the 100 free. Bernard had half a body length on Lezak when he dove into the pool for France.

Lezak made up some of the deficit on the first 50 but still it looked an impossible task for him to catch the Frenchman. But it’s the 400 freestyle relay, not the 350 and Lezak kept steaming toward the touchpad as the crowd at the Cube roared.

Lezak touched in the astounding world- record time of 3 minutes, 8.24 seconds, lopping off more than three seconds off the record set Sunday night by a U.S. “B” team.

Bernard touched in 3:08.32 to give France the silver medal after he had predicted a victory for his team. Phelps led off for the U.S. with a time of 47.51, putting his Americans in second place. Garrett Weber-Gale swam 47.02 on his leg to give the U.S. the lead, but Cullen Jones could not hold it on the third leg (47.65) as he gave ground to France’s Frederick Bousquet (46.63).

It was all up to Bernard for France and Lezak for the U.S. to determine the gold medal. Bernard ended up swimming 46.73 but he was smoked in the water by Lezak, who powered his way to the fastest leg of the day in 46.06.

At the touch-pad it was just enough to hold off the French by .08.

Phelps now has gold medal No. 2 in his Herculean quest to win eight and surpass by one the record haul of Mark Spitz from the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

After the race Phelps exhorted in victory and hugged his teammates, ever so thankful for their speed and especially Lezak’s when it counted most. 

• Dara Torres wins the Silver in women swimming's 400 m Relay.

Above all, there was Dara Torres becoming the oldest swimming medalist in history, at the age of 41, by taking silver with the U.S. 4x100-meter freestyle relay team.

Twenty of the 31 other women in the relay Sunday were not even born when Torres first took the Olympic plunge at the age of 17 in 1984.

"It's just bizarre, I think I might be older than her parents," Torres said of a 16-year-old Australian swimmer, Cate Campbell.

But there would be no gold medal to go with the four that Torres had already won in her historically lengthy career. The Netherlands, which set the world record in this event in March at the European championships, ended up winning the gold comfortably in a time of 3 minutes, 33.76 seconds with their team of Inge Dekker, Ranomi Kromowidjojo, Femke Heemskerk and Marleen Veldhuis.

But Torres, who will also swim the individual 50-meter freestyle here, had no problem keeping up with the rest of the younger set. Her much-anticipated anchor leg maintained the United States in second place ahead of Australia, which took the bronze, and ahead of the Chinese, whose nation has been giving hints of a swimming resurgence here after eight surprisingly barren years (they also got an unexpected silver medal in the men's 400 meter from Zhang Lin).

Torres's anchor time of 52.44 seconds was better than any other woman swimming that leg except for the 100-meter world record holder, Libby Trickett of Australia.

"I think there are a lot of middle-aged women and men who I know and who have contacted me or e-mailed me or stopped me in the street and told me I was an inspiration to them," Torres said. "As I've said from the beginning of this, age is just a number."

Torres was already the oldest Olympic female swimming medalist in history, after coming out of retirement the first time to take gold in the medley relay in Sydney in 2000. But after this latest, more improbable comeback, she is now the oldest swimming medalist of either gender, breaking the century-old standard of Britain's William Robinson, who was 38 when he won the silver in the 200-meter breaststroke in the 1908 Games.

After deciding to return to elite competition last year, Torres has sculpted her body into a startlingly well-defined instrument capable of swimming faster now than in her younger years, raising some doubts along the way about her methods.

Torres, all too aware of such concerns in an era where doping has tainted too many an improbable sports story, has submitted to supplementary drug testing through the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in an attempt to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she is respecting the rules as she disrespects the biological clock.

She is now the first American swimmer to compete in five Olympics and has won 10 Olympic medals, the most on this powerhouse American team, although Phelps already has nine (and counting).