Jul 25 - First Day Of Action At The Commonwealth Games
After Wednesday night’s opening ceremony attention turned yesterday to the first full day of competition. Mark Tewkesbury was Gibraltar’s first competitor in action as he took on Othniel Bailey from St Vincent and the Grenadines in the Squash preliminary round. Mark battled and at one stage was 2 – 1 up however he was to lose three sets to two to exit the main singles competition. There were better fortunes for Gibraltar’s Anthony Brindle who won his 1st round match 3 –nil and his currently on court in the 2nd round. Christian Navas, Gibraltar’s 3rd singles competitor, lost his opening match 3 – nil to Cameron Stafford from the Cayman Islands.
Three of Gibraltar’s swimming competitors hit the pool yesterday morning in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen who was visiting Games venues. Jim Sanderson was first up as he broke the national record for the 50m butterfly recording a time of 27.10 finishing 32nd out of 50 swimmers. Young Jordan Gonzalez, who is competing in his first games, was the 2nd swimmer to break a record as he finished the 100m backstroke in a new national record of 1.04.50. Veteran Colin Bensadon had a poor race for his standards clocking 2.56.61 for the 200m Breaststroke.
The only other action on the opening day for Gibraltar saw our Triathletes take the plunge at Strathclyde Country Park. Veteran Chris Walker was the only one of the three to finish as he came home 26th out of the 47 starters. Chris clocked a time of 2 hours, 10 minutes and 45 seconds. Richard Muscat and Andrew Gordon unfortunately were lapped by a very high class field.
The action continues today with more swimming and squash ahead of the weekend which sees the shooting begin.
