BEIJING -- Michael Phelps lowered his own Olympic record in the 200-meter butterfly on Monday night, about eight hours after winning his second gold medal of the Beijing Olympics in a thrilling 400-meter freestyle relay.

Phelps broke the record in preliminaries for the event, in which he is the reigning gold medalist and world record holder. He lowered the Olympic record he set at the 2004 Athens Games by 0.34 seconds to 1 minute, 53.70 seconds.

It was still well off the world record of 1:52.09 he set in Australia in March 2007.

"I don't want to say I cruised it, but I swam it the way I wanted," Phelps said. "It doesn't matter until the finals. As long as you have a lane you're in it."

Phelps is looking ahead to another busy morning at the Water Cube aquatics center.

He will swim in his third final on Tuesday morning, favored to win the 200-meter freestyle for his third gold medal of these Games -- almost halfway to breaking Mark Spitz's 36-year-old record of seven gold medals in one Olympics.

Something else of note: If Phelps wins the 200 freestyle on Tuesday, it will give him nine career Olympic gold medals, tying him with four athletes -- including Spitz and American track & field legend Carl Lewis -- for the most all-time.

If he breaks Spitz's Holy Grail record for gold medals in one game -- or even if he wins eight medals of any kind -- Phelps would be the all-time winningest medal winner among male Olympians.

Tuesday morning's 200 freestyle final will be followed by the semifinals of the 200 butterfly as Phelps keeps up his grueling schedule.

He also swam twice on Monday morning -- once for the tedious task of qualifying for the 200 freestyle finals and once as the first leg of the winning U.S. 400-meter freestyle relay.

Jason Lezak kept Phelps' dream of eight gold medals alive by mounting a spectacular comeback against France's Alain Bernard in the last 50 meters of the relay.

The Americans smashed the world record in the event. Their winning margin was just 0.08 seconds.

"I've never celebrated that much after a race in my life," Phelps recounted Monday night. "We had to do everything as a team to win that race and we did."

Also on Monday night, Italy's Federica Pellegrini broke Laure Manaudou's world record in the women's 200-meter freestyle.

Pellegrini set the mark during preliminaries for the event, where she is one of the favorites along with American swimmer Katie Hoff.

The 2004 silver medalist, Pellegrini lowered the world record by 0.07 seconds to 1 minute, 55.45 seconds (Manaudou, who had held the world record of 1:55.52 since March 2007, withdrew from the French team trials for the event).

Pellegrini said "no" five times when asked if she meant to set the world record. Normally a swimmer of her caliber will hold back for preliminaries to conserve energy.

"I didn't want to set a record tonight," said Pellegrini. "But I felt good in the water and I said, 'All right, let's go.'"

Hoff, who already has two medals -- a bronze and a silver -- in these Games, qualified fourth-fastest for the 200 freestyle semifinals in 1:57.20.

Carrying a large workload like Phelps, Hoff returned to the pool to swim in the 200-meter individual medley. Already a bronze medalist in the 400 IM, Hoff qualified second-fastest behind Alicia Coutts of Australia.

Coutts touched the wall in 2:11.55. Hoff was just 0.03 seconds behind in the same heat.

World record holder Stephanie Rice of Australia and U.S. star Natalie Coughlin also qualified for the semifinals.