St Kitts claims first Games gold ever while NZ waits

4.40pm

Memories of Kuala Lumpur in 1998 came flooding back as the New Zealand team remained medal-less after two full days of competition at the Manchester Commonwealth Games.

On a day when the tiny Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis won its first Commonwealth Games gold medal -- in the blue riband men's 100m track final -- New Zealand was still waiting on Saturday to register any bit of metal at these Games.

It was a similar story at the KL Games early on, before a late rush produced a haul of 24 medals including eight gold.

But it was not all gloom and doom on Saturday for New Zealand, with teenage shot put sensation Valerie Adams qualifying top for the women's discus final -- a week after collecting the world junior title in Jamaica.

New Zealand's women gymnasts excelled themselves in finishing fourth out of nine teams in the all-round competition, compared with eighth place at the KL Games.

With more hard work they could challenge the three traditionally powerful gymnastics nations in the Commonwealth -- Australia, England and Canada.

Meantime, they were satisfied with polished performances in the teams' event which saw three of them qualify for the individual all-round final and Alethea Boon also making it into two apparatus finals.

And there's been little to fault in the New Zealand badminton team, who on Saturday whitewashed their third straight opponents, Northern Ireland, 5-0. The New Zealanders are seeded second for the mixed teams' event.

The New Zealand netball team made the most of their easy tie against Canada as they racked up a Commonwealth Games record total of 101 goals to Canada's 17. Iren Van Dyk spent just 15 minutes on the court but was on the button with 20 of her 21 shots.

Elsewhere, the picture was not so bright for New Zealand.

Hopes of an upset in the men's hockey team were short-lived against defending champions Australia. Defender Hayden Shaw gave New Zealand an early lead but Australia were spurred into action and ended up handing out a 6-1 hiding.

Australia were also showing their prowess in cycling as they monopolised the medals in the men's time trial, leaving their trans-Tasman rivals Gordon McCauley, Heath Blackgrove and Nathan O'Neill to fill the ninth to 11th places.

New Zealand women Kirsty Robb and Melissa Holt were sixth and ninth respectively in the women's time trial.

The Kiwi bowls contingent were showing little sign of shaking off their under-achieving record from the KL Games, with the highly rated men's pair having lost two of their first three games and the women's four winning only two of their first four games.


On the bright side the women's pair of Sharon Sims and Jo Edwards made it two wins from two matches when overwhelming Malawi.

In the boxing ring, Wellington southpaw Daniel Headifen was on the wrong side of a narrow decision against Jamaica's Sheldon Rudolph in the 63.5kg division.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the day, from a Kiwi perspective, came 300km away from Manchester at the Bisley shooting range where four pairs combinations were off target for a medal.

The women's trap pair of Teresa Borrell and Nadine Stanton had been tipped for a medal after impressive form going into a field of five, but they finished fifth.

Kim Collins was the man who put St Kitts and Nevis on the sporting map, winning a surprise gold medal in the 100m sprint with a time of 9.98 seconds, leaving his vaunted English rivals Mark Lewis-Francis and Dwain Chambers hobbling behind him.

Lewis-Francis crossed the line in seventh in 10.54 and immediately crashed to the track holding his face in agony. He had to be stretchered off the track.

- NZPA

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