JOIN USSouth Africa’s Chad le Clos solidified his status as the world’s best 200M butterfly swimmer as he retained his Commonwealth Games title, while Australia added another four golds in the pool.
The most impressive individual performance, however, went to England’s Fran Halsall as she broke two Commonwealth Games records in winning the women’s 50m freestyle and qualifying fastest for Sunday’s 50m butterfly final.
Le Clos nearly came a cropper before he even got into the pool on Saturday after twisting his ankle when slipping off a bus as he arrived back at the athletes’ village on Friday night.
However, once he was in the water he sped clear of the field in the final 50 metres.“Last night I slipped off the bus, so I was a bit worried, my ankle was a bit swollen,” said Le Clos.
“It wasn’t too bad, so I just iced it. This morning it was quite bad in the heats so I was a bit worried, but we had 10 hours to strap it up and needle it a little bit so thanks to the physios.”
Halsall proved just as strong as she set a new personal best to see off Australian 100m freestyle world champion Cate Campbell by just four hundredths of a second in 23:96sec. Cate’s sister Bronte Campbell took bronze.
There was more joy for England as 19-year-old Adam Peaty beat Olympic champion Cameron van der Burgh of South Africa into second in the men’s 100m breaststroke.
Ross Murdoch continued his excellent meet with bronze after claiming gold in the 200m breaststroke to increase Scotland’s medal tally in the pool to six.
Daniel Fox got Australia’s first gold of the evening in the men’s para-sport 200m freestyle to add to his new world record time of 1min 57:16sec from qualifying on Saturday.
Thomas Hamer took silver for England with Wales’ Jack Thomas claiming bronze.There was an Australian one-two in the women’s 200m breaststroke as Taylor McKeown sealed gold ahead of teammate Sally Hunter, while England’s Molly Renshaw claimed bronze.
Emily Seebohm also set a new Commonwealth Games record of 59:37sec in retaining her 100m backstroke title.
Georgia Davies rounded off an encouraging evening for Wales with silver with another Aussie Belinda Hocking taking bronze. And the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team took Australia’s gold medal tally to 11 from a possible 21.