WRAPUP 2-Olympics-Phelps goes for eight, Romania wins marathon
* Phelps goes for record eighth swimming gold
* Romania's Tomescu wins women's marathon
* Greek hurdler fails drug test
* Bolt sets athletics programme on fire
BEIJING, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Michael Phelps swims for a record-breaking eighth gold at one Games on Sunday in Beijing where spectators are still agog at Usain Bolt's 100 metre win.
The first gold of Olympics day nine went to Romania when Constantina Tomescu crossed the finish first in the Bird's Nest stadium after a marathon run that began in Tiananmen Square.
Catherine Ndereba of Kenya took silver and Zhou Chunxiu of China the bronze, with Britain's world record holder Paula Radcliffe struggling with fitness and well back.
In the highest-profile doping case yet of the Aug. 8-24 Games, Greece's defending women's 400 metres hurdles champion Fani Halkia failed a drug test hours before she was to compete.
That recalled the doping sagas that darkened Athens 2004.
But it has been the scintillating sport not scandals in Beijing dominating attention and relegating the pre-Games focus on China's rights record and pollution problems.
Having matched fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven golds at Munich 1972, 23-year-old Phelps will stand alone in the record books if he and team mates win the men's 100 metres medley.
Phelps' 13 golds, which include six in Athens, make him the most successful Olympian of the modern era. A second-string U.S. squad qualified fastest in the medley heats, setting up Phelps and his "A-team" colleagues as firm favourites in the Water Cube.
Phelps has failed to match Spitz in one aspect.
His fingertip win on Saturday in the 100 metre butterfly over Serbia's Milorad Cavic was not in a world record time, unlike his six previous wins in Beijing.
All seven of Spitz's medals came in world record times.
JAMAICAN PARTY
It was Jamaica's Bolt, though, on everybody's lips overnight after he scorched to victory in the 100 metres sprint in world record time. That came despite slowing at the end to check he was ahead and punch his chest in joy in front of 91,000 spectators.
"I was just having fun, that's me," Bolt, 21, said afterwards.
While Bolt danced around the Bird's Nest stadium in celebration, cars honked and crowds cheered as a victory party began on his Caribbean island of 2.7 million people.
"This means a lot to my country. It means a lot to me," said the world's fastest man, whose favoured 200 metres comes next.
Sunday offers 37 golds, the most of any day in the Olympics.
Greece's Halkia lost her chance at keeping her title due to an Aug. 10 test while she was preparing in Japan, Greek Olympic Committee officials said.
"I can't believe it," Halkia told reporters, denying she had taken performance-enhancing drugs. "The first thing I thought of doing was to give all the nutritional supplements I have consumed, my vitamins, for testing."
The reputation of Greek sport took a blow on the eve of the Athens Olympics when sprinters Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, both medals hopes, missed a test and withdrew.
In a reminder of the political undercurrents around the Beijing Olympics, the Dalai Lama accused China of mistreating and torturing citizens in Tibet while the Games were on.
"Unfortunately the Olympic spirit is not being respected at all by Chinese officials in Tibet," he told a French TV station.
"Civilians are often arrested, violently tortured to the point where they die. It's really very, very sad."
Some pro-free Tibet protesters from abroad have braved a 100,000-strong security force in Beijing to shout or unfurl banners. But Chinese police have dealt with them swiftly. (Reporting by Beijing Olympic bureau, editing by Jon Bramley)
