UPDATE 1-Olympics-Swimming-Serbia protests 100 butterfly result

(adds details, quotes)

BEIJING, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Serbia lodged a protest over the result of the men's 100 metres butterfly final on Saturday after Milorad Cavic was beaten by 0.01 seconds by American Michael Phelps.

Phelps clocked 50.58 seconds to beat Cavic on the final stroke and claim his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Games, equalling Mark Spitz's 1972 record of golds at a single Olympics.

"We have made an official protest. It's first place, it is very important," Serbia's deputy chef de mission Branislav Jevtic told Reuters.

Jevtic did not provide specific details about the protest but the complaint was believed to be over whether the timing system worked properly and whether the Serbian touched the wall first.

FINA, the sport's world governing body, would not immediately comment but scheduled a press conference for later on Saturday.

Cavic said he would prefer the protest was dropped.

"If it was up to me I would drop the protest, I didn't want to fight it," he said.

"As we all know, technology is imperfect, it's possible (it malfunctioned)."

(Reporting by Julian Linden; Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

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