Team Wales DAY 4 Summary
Passionate Team Wales fans show their support in Birmingham!
- Men’s triples lawn bowls sweep a Bronze medal
- Team Wales fans dominate crowds as support grows for the team
- Last day of track cycling
BOXING
Jake Dodd was first up for Team Wales in the ring on Monday Afternoon. The 27-year-old was up against Lesotho’s Kolobe Retselisitsoe. Dodd kept it short and sweet as he won his bout with a second round stoppage, advancing into the final eight of the competition.
In the evening session, Taylor Bevan returns for his second fight of the games in the last 16. It was 2/2 for the Welsh boxers today, as Taylor Bevan won his bout with a third round stoppage and will progress to the quarters.
WEIGHTLIFTING
A consistent start saw Christie lift strong in her first round. An impressive final clean and jerk saw the whole crowd cheer Christie on to finish 7th.
A tense evening, despite a brilliant performance saw Faye’s second clean and jerk not allowed finishing 8th place.
Christie told S4C, ‘I’m so proud to be Welsh. The crowd at Gold Coast were amazing but so many people have travelled here today and I’ve never seen a crowd like it. They get me through, they push me to do what I do.”
GYMNASTICS – MEN’S FLOOR FINAL
A brilliant and engaging floor routine saw Emil Barber improve on his qualification score by 0.150 to take an agonisingly close bronze. Joe Cemlyn-Jones unfortunately fell during his routine and finished in 8th place.
WOMEN’S GYMNASTICS
In their first Commonwealth Games All Around Finals, Poppy Stickler and Jea Maracha gave the performances of their lives to secure 5th and 10th place respectively, amazing achievements for the two 16 year olds. Both had clean competitions with Poppy’s floor particularly engaging the arena’s enthusiastic crowd. The support in the crowd was incredible with special mention going to the daffodil clad team from Swansea and Llanelli Gymnastics Clubs.
TRACK CYCLING
Team Wales were unable to add to their medal tally on the final day of competition at the Lee Valley VeloPark. They finished their four-day stay in east London with six medals, with the Time Trials (on Thursday) and Road Races (Sunday) to come for Welsh Cycling.
They will now move up to Birmingham to prepare for challenges away from the track after a long weekend in the only venue outside the West Midlands.
Eleanor Victoria Coster, Emma Finucane and Rhian Edmunds got proceedings underway, competing in the Women’s Keirin. Finucane and Edmunds both progressed to the Final 1-6 race where they finished fourth and sixth.
Joe Holt and Harvey McNaughton went out in the Men’s 1000m Time Trial, posting times of 1.01.422 (for 8th position) and 1.02.659 (13th) respectively.
Next Ella Barnwell, Anna Morris and Megan Barker appeared in the 10km Scratch Race which was temporarily stopped after an incident between Byrony Botha (New Zealand) and Meenakshi Meenakshi (India) with 20 laps to go.
Barker was performing well up to that point, joining a breakaway before the stoppage. In the end she finished 12th behind Ella Barnwell (7th) and Anna Morris (8th). Laura Kenny took the title, roared home by a deafening crowd.
Rhys Britton, Joshua Tarling and William Roberts appeared in the final event on the track, the Men’s 40km Scratch Race, but they were unable to mount a challenge for a medal to surpass the team’s Gold Coast haul. Britton and Roberts did not finish while Tarling ended the longest race of the meeting (160 laps) in a creditable seventh place.
LAWN BOWLS
The first medal of the day was ticked off by the men’s triples who narrowly missed out on a place in the gold medal match this morning. This afternoon, they secured the bronze against Fiji (21 – 7). Fifteen minutes later, the men’s pairs had won their semi final to guarantee them a silver in their match against England tomorrow.
In an interview with the BBC, the team applauded the Welsh fans: “The fans are tremendous, it’s like we’re playing in Wales. There are pockets of fans and you can hear them when you play and it really pushes you on.”
JUDO
All the Welsh judokas won their first round matches. Daniel Rabbitt, Gregg Varey and Ashleigh-Anne Barnikel later lost their repechage matches and so did not progress to the medal matches in the evening.
SQUASH
In what proved to be a thrilling encounter, Joel Makin was in impressive form to beat Eain Yow Ng of Malaysia in 4 games to book his place in the men’s semi finals (11-4, 9-11, 11-3, 11-9) The match wasn’t without its drama with Makin’s opponent falling and the match was stopped for injury time as he received treatment.
Joel was delighted with the win and spoke afterwards ‘I started the match well but credit to him he made things difficult and it was stop start with a blood injury break and there wasn’t that continuity of play I would have wanted.’
‘You’ve just got to keep on the scoreboard, take your chances and I think I did a bit of work to him physically and I started to hurt him and towards the back end that definitely paid off!’
Meanwhile in the women’s quarter finals Emily Whitlock was beaten by Sarah Jane Perry in 3 games with the England player winning 11-6, 11-6, 11-6.
TABLE TENNIS
The women’s team achieved the highest ever finish for a Welsh women’s team event in Commonwealth Games history despite losing 3-0 to Australia in the bronze medal match. The girls fought valiantly, turning the pressure on Gold medal favourites Australia.
A change in tactics saw Charlotte and Chloe pair up for the doubles match, followed by Anna in the first singles round and Charlotte in the final round. With a number of sets being decided by a margin of two marks.
Charlotte will now move on to compete in the singles, doubles paired with Anna Hursey and mixed doubles competition paired with Callum Evans.
Anna will also compete in the singles and doubles paired with Charlotte.
Chloe will also compete in the singles category and doubles paired with Lara Whitton.
Lara will compete in the doubles category paired with Chloe.
“We’re devastated obviously, but I think the main devastation was really last night. It was heartbreaking, it went down to the wire. We had a really good chance and I think it was hard to pick ourselves up from that.
We’re a really strong unit and really good friends. Everyone, even the ones who weren’t playing, the para players, the boys and even the physio were picking us up last night. Obviously it was devastating to lose that yesterday.
Today we gave everything that we could, but Australia were the better team. I was expecting them to win a gold medal. They obviously really wanted to clinch that medal and fairplay to them. They played really well.”
Charlotte Carey
HOCKEY
Wales women’s hockey squad took their first win on Day 4, beating Ghana 4 – 0. Beth Bingham also achieved her 100th cap for Wales.
They play England on Thursday morning in their final group stage game.
SWIMMING
Charlotte Evans competed in the 200m backstroke final finishing in 6th. Despite being disappointed with her final swim, Charlotte was thrilled to have made a final in her first major championships.
Kyle Booth competed in the 50m breaststroke semi final, placing 8th in a highly competitive field. He commented that the atmosphere was ‘completely electric’
Rebecca Sutton placed 6th in the 100m semi final, beating her own Welsh record.
Lewis Fraser placed 5th in the 100m butterfly semi final swimming a PB at 52.81s.
Joe Small finished 8th in the 50m butterfly final. He was so grateful that his family and his girlfriend’s family could get last minute tickets to support him.
Harriet Jones finished 6th in the 50m butterfly final and was really pleased with her performance in such a competitive field.
The men’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay team finished in an agonisingly close 4th place having placed in 2nd for the majority of the race. The team composed of Matt Richards, Callum Jarvis, Dan Jones and Kieran Bird smashed the Welsh record by 5 seconds in a time of 7.10.64. The team were proud and emotional following what was teammate Callum Jarvis’ last race.