Click on the icon below for a detailed report from Delhi on SINI and PDC athletes.
Commonwealth Games Day 3
By Nigel Ringland in Delhi
Northern Ireland is on the verge of winning a first medal of the Commonwealth Games.
It should come at the Indira Gandhi velodrome this afternoon in the 4000m team pursuit.
In qualifying yesterday Sean Downey, Philip Lavery, Martyn Irvine and David McCann, who only arrived in the Indian capital a few hours before he raced, finished third behind the powerhouses of Australia and New Zealand.
However it means they’ll race today for the bronze medal against the host nation and while they may not have the crowd behind them, as long as they stay on their bikes they should collect some hardware because they were nine seconds quicker than the Indian quartet.
Sport NI funded athlete David McCann said, "I came in last minute into the team and we have all done a bit of track training together so it has paid off and we had a nice smooth ride so I am looking forward to trying to win a medal."
That wasn’t the only good performance at the track. SINI athlete Heather Wilson produced the ride of her life in the women’s points race to finish in fifth place.
Four years ago the 28 year-old from Hillsborough was competing in the triathlon in Melbourne before focusing on cycling and the hard work since appears to be paying off.
She stuck to her game plan going with a break after 40 of the 100 laps with four other riders and gaining a lap on the peloton and 20 points that put her temporarily in the bronze medal position.
She added another couple of points in a later sprint but in the end the Australians and New Zealanders, each country with three riders in the event proved too strong but Wilson was quite rightly delighted with her efforts.
“I’m delighted, I went out there with a plan and I stuck to it although maybe it didn’t quite go the right way in the end. It’s a long enough race and the legs just gave up and couldn’t manage to get up there for the final three sprints but while I’m really happy to get fifth you always wish you were two places closer in third,” she said afterwards.
“It is hard when you have three riders in other teams because you don’t know who to watch and who is going to block who. You just have to try and get on the right wheel but it can be a lot harder. I think I did okay because there were a lot of the top nations there.”
Wilson will go in the scratch race today and is confident of doing well.
“ I was maybe a bit uncertain about my form coming in here so that race has given me a lot of confidence so now I’ll just give it everything, that’s what I’m here to do and that’s what all the supports for,” added Wilson who trains at the Sports Institute of Northern Ireland.
There were no words to console SINI athlete Madeline Perry after her crushing defeat at the hands of Aussie Kasey Brown in the quarter-finals of the squash.
Perry had set her sights on winning a Commonwealth medal knowing that this was probably her last chance to do so.
Seeded four she played the first two sets like the world number one blitzing Brown who had recently beaten her at the World Open in Egypt.
You would have been left wondering how that happened as Perry won 11-5, 11-6 and moved into an 8-4 lead in the third.
It looked like a formality but then the unexplainable happened. She lost six points in a row before recovering to tie the score at 10-10 but eventually Brown took the set 14-12.
She added the next 11-9 setting up a thrilling decider and when Perry took an 8-6 advantage it looked like the tide had finally turned in her favour but the Australian girl dug deep and had two match points at 10-8. Perry saved them both but then missed the ball entirely at 10-10 giving Brown a third chance to seal the game and she did just that.
Perry couldn’t fight back the tears afterwards and was unable to speak about the game.
She still has a women’s doubles to come later in the week with Bangor’s Zoe Barr but there’s no doubt this defeat was perhaps the toughest she has had to take in her career.
The first evening of athletics took place on the newly laid track at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium with very few spectators in attendance.
SINI Sprinter Amy Foster finished third in her 100m heat to qualify for the semi-finals later tonight.
"I didn't get a great start but I finished strongly and am happy to be through to the semi-finals so the focus is on it now.”
In the 400m 17 year-old Joanna Mills from Ballyclare was fourth in her heat to qualify in 55.46 seconds but Ballymoney’s Jo Patterson, 22, and 16 year-old Katie Kirk were eliminated although all three will look forward to the 4x400m relay next week.
"It was over very quickly and everything from here is a bonus and I'm just going to relax, enjoy it and take it all in,” said Mills.
In the pool Sport Northern Ireland PDC athlete Bethany Carson set two new personal best in the 100m butterfly, the first in the heats and then she swam 1:03.13 in the semi-final that ranked her 14th overall.
Laurence McGivern who was the only junior in the S9 50m freestyle final, finished in 7th place in 28.95 in a highly competitive field where the winner set a World Record. He also set a personal best in the morning session of 28.84.
The 4x200m freestyle relay girls – Melanie Nocher, Sycerika McMahon, Carson and Clare Dawson broke the Ulster record by almost forty seconds recording a time of 8:13.02.
Dawson said, "It was good being here and competing in the relay as a team and that was a new Ulster Senior record so we are pretty happy with that, especially up against the top teams. It was good for us to get a relay in as we haven't competed on the same team before so where better to do it than Commonwealths!"
Welterweight Paddy Gallagher was the only Northern Ireland boxer in the ring on Wednesday. In a low scoring contest against Joseph Mulema from Cameroon it took until the second round for Gallagher to land the first scoring punch. He recorded two more in the remainder of the contest to win 3-0.
Today SINI athlete Paddy Barnes begins his quest for a medal with a last sixteen bout against Scot Iain Butcher at light-flyweight.
At flyweight Michael Conlon from the St. John Bosco club in Belfast fights a tough Aussie Jason Moloney.
It wasn’t the greatest day for Northern Ireland’s bowlers.
The men’s triples, skipped by 42 year-old Neil Booth from Randalstown along with Martin McHugh from Whitehead and Belfast’s Paul Daly beat Kenya but lost to Guernsey and with three wins from four are still well in contention to make the knockout stages.
It’s the same record for the women’s triples – Sandra Bailie, Mandy Cunningham and Barbara Logue – who were well beaten by New Zealand but then bounced back to claim the scalp of Australia.
However the women’s pair of Donna McCloy and Jennifer Dowds lost to Botswana and with only two wins from their opening five games making the quarter-finals is going to be tough.
It’s three wins and three defeats for the men’s pair of Gary McCloy and Ian McClure after losing to the Aussies but beating Niue Island in a must have game.
Lisburn’s Luke Carson produced an impressive display throughout the final of the all-around competition.
It included a personal best in the parallel bars and he was within the top ten until the final piece of apparatus when he made an error on the pommel horse and fell down the order to 15th place with 78.200 points.
"I started on rings and did a good routine and then went on to vault and parallel bars where I got a PB and my high bar was also excellent. I made one mistake on the floor, which nearly cost me a lot, but I just saved that. I was happy with the score considering the mistake and then came to pommel horse, which is a nervy piece, and finishing on it got into my head. I sat down on the horse which is a huge mistake and that set me back six places so its devastating for me as it would have been a top ten placing. I was so sharp in the warm-up so it is disappointing.”
In the women’s all round final Seriena Johnrose finished 14th with 48.100 points while Charlotte McKenna was 24th. Johnrose competes in the final of the vault later today.
Northern Ireland’s archers were beaten by Cyprus in the last sixteen of the men’s team recurve. Mark Nesbitt, Ian McGibbon and Karl Watson went out to an early lead only to be overhauled and their Games came to a disappointing conclusion as they all lost in the last 32 of the individual event on Tuesday.
The trio in the compound team event – Robert Hall, Stuart Wilson and Darrel Wilson reached the quarter-finals beating Scotland before losing the England.
