by Stuart WeirThe first day of athletics at 2018 Commonwealth Games is over! A fascinating first day and some medals were distributed in the Gold Coast. Here’s Stuart Weir’s column on day 1, which kept our friend up and observing from 4:15 AM on. Such is the thankless life of an Englishman. Also, make sure that, if you are not familiar with the term curates egg (and who, isn’t), you follow our link to an earlier piece where Mr. Weir explains the reference.
Sprint prelims, photo by J. Stuart Weir
Day 1
It was a day of race-walking, hammer-throwing, sprint prelims and a men’s 5000m. It started at 4.15am for your correspondent as the first race-walk was at 7.00am.
Local favourite Dane Bird-Smith won the first athletics medal of the Games, taking the Men’s 20K race walk in 1:19:34 (Games record) with England’s Tom Bosworth second in 1:19:38 (PR and National record). Remarkably all the athletes finished with no disqualifications and merely one yellow card.
Women’s 20k Race Walk, 2018 Commonwealth Games, photo by J. Stuart Weir
All the drama was in the women’s 20K race. There was an Australian 1-2 for most of the race with 20 year old Jemima Montag vying with the 36 year old Claire Tallent. An early break by Montag seems to leave Tallent struggling but the veteran edged her way back. Then with 3000 metres to go Tallent was shown a third red card and was out. It was what the arena commentator called “a Jane Saville moment”, a reference to the disqualification of another Australian race-walker in the Sydney Olympics. With Tallent gone, Montag triumphed a day early – Montag is the German for Monday.
Sprint heats, 2018 Commonwealth Games, photo by Stuart Weir
The heats of the 100 metres well illustrated the curate’s egg of the Commonwealth athletics. The fastest qualifier was Yohan Blake of Jamaica (strolling) in 10.15 and the slowest athlete registered 15.47 – also strolling. There were more disqualifications in the heats of the men’s 100 metres (three) than the two race walks (two). Incidentally why is it called “race walking” when you don’t call the 100 meters, “race running”? There was also a faulty start, enabling stadium announcer , Geoff Wightman, to inform an athletics crowd for the 47th time – perhaps the first in Australia – that the showing of a green card meant that all the athletes could now work in USA!
Nick Miller, gold medal, Hammer Throw, photo courtesy of British Athletics
An absorbing hammer throw competition saw Nick Miller (England) take the gold medal from Matt Denny (Australia) and Mary Dry (Scotland). Miller was delighted to win but arguably more pleased that his winning throw of 80.26 was better than his coach, Tore Gustafsson’s PR of 80.14.
Joshua Kiprui Cheptegei of Uganda won the 5000m in 13:50.83 from Canada’s Mohammed Ahmed and Kenya’s Edward Pingua Zakayo. Ugandans took three of the top six places and appropriately James Sugira of Rwanda was sixth, on the day after the anniversary of the genocide.
Olivia Breen, gold medal, T38 LJ, photo courtesy of British Athletics
The first para-athletics event of the day was the T38 (cerebral palsy) long jump. Olivia Breen (Wales) struggled with three fouls in four jumps before finding a PR of 4.86 with her final jump for the gold medal. She said afterwards: “It went really well. Obviously I got three no jumps but I am really happy to have got the last one right”. She added: “It is really important to have para-athletics in Games like this as we want to inspire the next generation. It is really exciting to be out there and really important for people to understand disability sport”.
Overall a good start to the Commonwealth athletics program.
For an explanation of a curate’s egg see www.runblogrun.com/2018/02/womens-field-events-from-glasgow-some-deep-thoughts-from-stuart-weir.html
