Alex Marshall made history on day nine of the Gold Coast Games, by winning gold in the Lawn Bowls Men’s Fours competition; taking his all-time Commonwealth Games total to six medals (5 gold, 1 silver). The medal makes him Scotland’s most successful athlete in the history of the Commonwealth Games; overtaking Allan Wells.

Another history maker today was Grace Reid, who became Scotland’s first ever female medalist in Diving; and the first winner of a gold medal in the sport for 60 years as she won the 1m Springboard competition. After winning bronze yesterday, Seonaid McIntosh was back in action in the Women’s 3P event at the Belmont Shooting Centre, once again taking the bronze medal.

Boxing duo Reece McFadden and John Docherty lost out in their respective semi-finals and will take home bronze medals from Australia. It’s a bittersweet result for both fighters, who had their eyes on gold; but the results mean Boxing continues its record as being the only sport to have brought home medals for Scotland from every Games since its inception in 1930.

The results see Scotland end the day on 41 medals (9 gold, 13 silver, 19 bronze); sitting seventh in the medal table.

For detailed reports see the individual sport features for Lawn Bowls, Diving, Shooting and Boxing.

Athletics

Holly McArthur acquitted herself superbly on her senior international debut, with the 18-year-old securing a fine top 10 position in the Women’s Heptathlon. After an opening day that saw the youngster set High Jump and Shot Put personal bests, she returned to the Carrara Stadium to produce good performances in the Long Jump, and Javelin before winning heat one of the 800m in 2.13.04, just outside her personal best.

Finishing 10^th with a points total of 5381, just 300 short of her personal best, McArthur can be proud of her Commonwealth Games debut and was happy with her performance despite admitting to being tired towards the end.

“I’m happy that I got such a solid finish – it was good to round it off on a high note – it’s been so much fun. I didn’t expect the crowd to be as loud as they were, and I think they really helped my performances. I had a few highs and lows but overall I feel like my first Commonwealth Games has gone well – it’s such a valuable experience and I have no regrets.”

Back in action after an impressive fourth place in the 800m last night, Jake Wightman safely advanced to the Men’s 1500m final tomorrow afternoon where he’ll once again go for silverware. Running in the second of two heats this morning, Wightman ran a flawless race to comfortably finish third, ensuring he advanced automatically.

Chris O’Hare ran in the first heat, just missing out on a top four spot in fifth but progressing thanks to his 3.44.76 time. Both men will rest up ahead of the final at 16.10hrs (07:10hrs UK time) on Saturday.

Also in action on the final day of the track and field programme are Eilish McColgan and Steph Twell in the Women’s 5000m Final at 15:20hrs (06:20hrs UK time), Nikki Manson in the Women’s High Jump Final at 14:25hrs (05:25hrs UK time) and the Women’s 4x400m relay team at 16.38hrs (07:38hrs UK time).

Badminton
Kirsty Gilmour advanced to the Women’s Singles semi-finals, albeit in unfortunate circumstances as her opponent Ruthvika Gadde of India was forced to retire injured. Gilmour was back on court just hours after beating English number one Chloe Birch late last night and was in control when her opponent suffered a back injury, which ended the tie.

A frustrated Gilmour commented post-match: “I came off court relatively late last night and I didn’t get to sleep until about 3am. To then get up this morning and do all your preparation as if this is going to be the toughest match of your life and then for something so unfortunate to happen is frustrating. I really can’t complain but I hope Ruthvika is ok.

“I’ll go away and do a bit of training to iron out a few things I wanted to work on in the match, and then try and come down again and prepare for tomorrow.”

Gilmour returns to the court against India’s Saina Nehwal; with the session starting at 11:00hrs (02:00hrs UK time).

It was however the end of the road for young Men’s Doubles pairing Adam Hall and Alex Dunn, as they bowed out to number one seeds and Olympic silver medallists V Shem Goh and Wee Kiong Tan of Malaysia. After losing the first game 21-9, the Scottish pair started poorly in the second, but rallied from 6-0 down to run their opposition close at 21-17.

Afterwards Hall commented: “We expected a bit better from ourselves and in the first game and a half we didn’t play very well; they gave us no opportunity to get started.”

However, Dunn was keen to highlight the positives towards the end of the match, adding: “We did quite well, getting into the game a bit more and we started to step up the court and control some of the rallies – it was just a case of too little too late. It’s been an amazing experience though and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not every day you get to play against these top players, but we really need to take what we can from it.”

Cycling

Team Scotland will enter eight athletes in tomorrow’s Road Race at the Currumbin Beach Front; the last contest for the ten-medal-winning team in the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. It’s a sharp start for the women’s riders who take off at 07:45 hrs (22:45 hrs UK time), with Katie Archibald, Neah Evans, Louise Haston, Eileen Roe and Isla Short all competing in the 112km, six-lap race.

The men follow at 12:30 hrs (03:30hrs UK time) with Grant Ferguson, Kyle Gordon and Mark Stewart lining up in the 168km nine-lap event, with John Archibald unable to recover sufficiently to take part, following his crash in the Time Trial event.

Hockey

Team Scotland’s men finished their competition in sixth place today following a 2-1 loss in their classification game against Malaysia. Alan Forsyth took the lead for Team Scotland when he scored on 10 minutes; but Malaysia didn’t take long to equalise on 20 minutes, and then sneaked ahead in the second half with another goal at 38 minutes.

Sixth place represents Scotland’s best ever finish in Men’s Hockey and speaking after the match, captain Chris Grassick said: “Overall we are delighted with the result – although I’m obviously a bit gutted we didn’t get more out of our last game. Malaysia are 12^th in the world rankings and we’re 23^rd so it was always going to be tough. We’ve played some unbelievable hockey since we got here, and we definitely deserve that sixth-place finish.”

Rugby Sevens

The Team Scotland Rugby Sevens squad kick-off their Gold Coast Games campaign at Robina Stadium tomorrow, where they will face Papua New Guinea at 11:43hrs (02:43 hrs UK time), Malaysia (09:15 hrs UK time) and South Africa (13:17 hrs UK time) in Pool A. Only the top-ranked team from the group advance to the semi-finals on day two (Sunday 14 April) for a chance to take home a medal.

Scotland 7s Head Coach, John Dalziel, added: “To represent Team Scotland in a Commonwealth Games is a huge honour for everyone involved and I’d like to thank Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby for their continued support, ensuring we have assembled our country’s leading sevens exponents.”

Squash

Alan Clyne and Greg Lobban faced a tough match against Malaysian duo Mohammad Syafiq Kamal and Eain Yow Ng. After losing a narrow first game 11-9, the Scots rallied to take the next two 11-6 and 11-5 respectively; winning the match 2-1. They will face Australian duo Zac Alexander and David Palmer tomorrow at 13:00hrs (04:00hrs UK time) for a place in the gold-medal match. It will be a repeat of the 2016 World Championships final, which the Scottish pair won 2-0.

After the match Alan said: “It wasn’t in the plan to lose the first game, but they played well. They came back strong, playing some good points. In a best-of-three and being one down you can’t afford to make any mistakes. We played some great squash after that.

Looking ahead to the semi-final, Greg added: “It was nice to be on the glass today. It’s completely different to the back courts so great to get that experience today, and I think we’ll improve tomorrow.”

Wrestling
Joe Hendry was the final Team Scotland wrestler in action as he took to the mat in the Men’s Freestyle 97kg category. Hendry was more than a match for crowd favourite Nicolaas Verreynne of Australia but trailed 2-0 at the halfway mark. With neither man able to find a winning move, Hendry threw caution to the wind in the closing 30 seconds, which ultimately cost him defeat by fall.

Afterwards he reflected: “It’s devastating – it’s a long way to come and it sucks. I think the start threw me off a little bit but it wasn’t to be today and I guess my lack of experience got the better of me. My strategy going in was a top-heavy game but he was obviously strong in that area and so I probably should have come in armed with more leg attacks.”