It continued an entertaining second half to day four following the excitement in table tennis, rowing, shooting and rugby sevens earlier in the day.

After leading following the first round, Europe, who also won the team title at the inaugural Games four years ago, were similarly dominant once again with their six-strong squad of Great Britain's Jake Saywl, Ireland's Michael Duffy, Italy's Matias Alvaro, Sweden's Filip Agren and The Netherlands' Lisa Nooren incurred a total of just a single penalty to finish ahead of South and North America.

Duffy, who rode one of team's four clear rounds on borrowed horse Commander, also secured the first Irish podium presence of Nanjing 2014.

Riders from 18 different countries were represented on the podium ©FEI



In fact, the competition was a wonderful opportunity for athletes from different countries to win medals, with jumpers from Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Cayman Islands, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador all gaining their countries first medal of the Games.

The one achieved by Ecuador's Granja Chiriboga was won as part of the bronze medal winning North American team, rather than the silver medal winning South American one.

While the mixed nation format provided opportunity to work with new team mates and learn from fellow athletes who would usually be rivals, it also provided an opportunity for another show of sporting unity when fencers from Japan and Hong Kong fought side by side.

Their Asia-Oceania team, consisting of two fencers from each of those teams as well as a further duo from South Korea, won gold ahead of two European outfits for the final fencing medal here.

Rūta Meilutytė won the 100m breaststroke for her second gold of the Games ©Getty Images



In swimming it was also a day of European success as Russia earned three gold medals and China a further two.

The stand-out moment, however, was provided by Lithuania's reigning world and Olympic champion Rūta Meilutytė, when the 17-year-old clocked 1min 05.29sec in her preferred 100 metres breaststoke event to finish more than two seconds clear of China's He Yun.

This was her second gold of the Games following her 50m triumph on Monday (August 18).

Evgeny Rylov in the 50m backstroke and Rozaliya Nasretdinova in the 50m butterfly each set world junior records in winning sprint titles for Russia, while the European power also won the final event of the evening, the boy's 4x100m medley relay.

Ippei Watanabe of Japan won the 200m breaststroke while Yu Hexin and Shen Duo earned freestyle Chinese titles in the respective boy's 200m and girl's 50m events. 

On the penultimate day of taekwondo action, Said Guliyev secured the first Azerbaijani gold of the Games in the boy's under 73 kilogram competition, while Kimia Alizaden Zenoorin won Iran's first female gold medal in any form of the Olympic Games with under 63kg victory.

The 16-year-old, who carried the Iranian Flag in the Opening Ceremony here, also won the gold medal in the 10th World Junior Taekwondo Championships in Taipei in March.

The final gold medal of the night was won by 15-year-old gymnast Seda Tutkhalyan of Russia, whose score of 54.900 was enough to push Flavia Lopes Saraiva of Brazil and Ellie Downie of Britain into the minor medal positions.