Golden start for Australia in the pool

Swimming Australia
Published: Oct 5, 2010 08:28:50 AM Updated: Nov 13, 2012 11:52:19 AM

Australia has had a golden start in the pool on the first night of the Delhi Commonwealth Games winning three gold and two silver medals.

Australia’s first gold of the Games went to Olympic relay gold medallist Kylie Palmer, who upstaged her more fancied rivals, to crash into the wall first in 1:57.50, from Wales swimmer Jazmin Carlin (1:58.29), while Rebecca Adlington touched third in 1:58.47.

It was a breakthrough win for the Stephan Widmer trained Queenslander, who showed no ill effect of the shoulder injury that sidelined her for all of 2009, claiming her first individual international gold medal.

Redlands swim club member from Queensland Alicia Coutts turned in the race of her life in the 200m IM to beat home race favourite Emily Seebohm and clock a new Commonwealth Games and personal best time of 2:09.70.

The 23-year-old Coutts powered past silver medallist Seebohm (2:10.83) in the breaststroke leg and showed true grit to hold her off over the final 50m.  

Australia’s third gold medal and second Commonwealth Games record for the night came courtesy of the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay team of Kyle Richardson, Tommaso D’Orsogna, Eamon Sullivan and anchor man James Magnussen.

The spirited quartet did not have the race their own way and it took a crowd-raising effort from Olympic silver medallist Eamon Sullivan, who swam a scintilating 47.49 second leg, to seal victory in 3:13.92, from England (3:15.05) and Canada (3:15.21).  

20-year-old Ryan Napoleon went within a fingernail of claiming Australia’s fourth gold medal in the 400m freestyle, when he was out touched by Canada’s Ryan Cochrane in one of the races of the night.

Napoleons silver medal winning time of 3:48.59 was just 0.11 behind Cochrane, who showed superior stamina, to swim over the top of the Australian and claim gold in 3:48.48, while Scotland’s 2006 champion Robert Carry was third in 3:50.06.   

In the men’s 200m butterfly Australia’s pairing of Chris Wright (1:57.32) and Jayden Hadler (1:57.378) finished just outside the medals, when they touched in fourth and fifth respectively behind South Africa’s Dertrand Le Clos, who snared gold in 1:56.48.

A comprehensive list of results can be found by viewing the below website.

http://results.cwgdelhi2010.org/en/Root.mvc/

In semi-final action…

Women’s 50m breaststroke
1^st Leiston Pickett – 30.74
2^nd Leisel Jones -31.29
4^th Sarah Katsoulis – 31.58

Men’s 50m backstroke
1^st Ashley Delaney -25.04
2^nd Hayden Stoeckel -25.27
3^rd Daniel Arnamnart – 25.39

Women’s 50m butterfly
1^st Marieke Guehrer – 26.07
2^nd Yolane Kukla – 26.22
4^th Emily Seebohm- 26.62

 

In this article: Christopher Wright, Eamon Sullivan, Emily Seebohm, Kyle Richardson, Kylie Palmer, Ryan Napoleon, James Magnussen, Jayden Hadler, Tommaso D'Orsogna, Alicia Coutts,