Ian Thorpe has missed the medals but swam a satisfying personal best as he and archrival Pieter van den Hoogenband were both upstaged in the 100m freestyle at the World Cup swimming meeting.

Thorpe came home strongly to finish fourth in 47.82secs, but was still well behind world short course champion Jose Meolans from Argentina who swam 47.32 while Dutchman van den Hoogenband clocked 47.37 to collect the silver.

Algeria's Salim Iles separated van den Hoogenband and Thorpe.

The Australian triple world champion was lucky to sneak into the final by one hundredth of a second when he qualified eighth fastest in this morning's heats with a relatively pedestrian 48.83.

But knocking over a second off that time in the final to record his fastest short course 100m encouraged Thorpe as he contemplated adding the 100m to his 200m, 400m and 800m titles at the world championships in Barcelona in July.

"I'm really pleased with where I'm at, it's a very big positive for me for my preparations for the world championships later this year," he said.

While Thorpe left the first day of the two day meeting empty handed, Australians picked up three bronze.

Tarnee White failed by two hundredths of a second to repeat her silver from the Stockholm meeting earlier in the week but settled with bronze in the 100m breaststroke in 1:07.32, with Canadian Rhiannon Leier edging her to second and Austria's Mirna Jukic taking gold.

Josh Krogh picked up his third bronze medal of the week, finishing third in the 200m butterfly in good company, with Britain's world champion James Hickman taking gold and America's Olympic champion Tom Malchow the silver.

World short course champion Jim Piper was outgunned by Japan's long course world record holder Kosuke Kitajima and Austrian Maxim Podoprigora in the 200m breaststroke.

Thorpe and van den Hoogenband will meet in the 200m tomorrow, the final day of the seven-meeting World Cup series.

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