Associated Press

BEIJING — The women’s 200m backstroke and men’s 50m freestyle at the 2008 Olympics turned into a big advertisement for Auburn University’s swimming program.

Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe) and former AU roomate Margaret Hoelzer (United States) finished 1-2 in the 200m backstroke.

Thirty minutes later, AU’s Ceasar Cielo (Brazil) took gold in the 50m freestyle — allowing him the title of fastest swimmer in the world.

In the women’s 200m backstroke Coventry, who won gold in the 2004 Athens Olympics, led wire-to-wire to set the world record with a time of 2:05.24 — more than a second better than the previous record which was held by Hoelzer.

Hoelzer was just behind in second with a time of 2:06.23 to take the silver.

It marked the first time in Olympic Games history for Auburn swimmers to go 1-2 in an event. Coventry and Hoelzer went 2-3 earlier in the week in the women’s 100m backstroke.

In the 50m freestyle, Cielo led from the outset and finished with an Olympic-record time of 21.30, just two-tenths of a second off the world record.

The medal was the 11th for Auburn in the 2008 Olympics and the second gold medal of the Games. Auburn now holds the lead among American colleges and universities for medals won in Beijing. Second on the list is California-Berkeley with nine medals and Florida with six medals.

If Auburn were its own country, it would currently rank 10th in the medal count with 11 medals so far. The United States leads with 48, followed by China (41), Australia (21), France (20), Russia (19), Korea (18), Italy (15), Japan (14) and Germany (14).

Earlier in the day Hoelzer, Mark Gangloff and Matt Targett all swam as part of 400-meter medley relay teams, giving themslves a shot at a medal during tonight’s finals.

Hoelzer swam the backstroke leg for the United States with a leadoff split of 59.29, the fastest among all 16 teams competing in the preliminary and was only one of two that came in under a minute.

Her team won its heat and finished third overall in the prelims.

Gangloff and the American team posted the top overall time whole Targett helped lead Australia to a win in their heat, placing second overall.

However, all three will likely not compete in today’s 400m medley relay final.

Incoming freshman Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace of the Bahamas also competed Friday, swimming in the 50m freestyle prelims.