Medal delight for Harriet, Sarah and Rachael!!

Pictures of sheer delight!


Harriet Pryke and Sarah Dowling celebrating together after the 400m medal ceremony.

Sarah was so happy to be back on the podium in an individual event for the first time since 2003.

An overjoyed Rachael Franklin celebrating her 1500m silver medal with gold medalist Eilidh Mackenzie of the Western Islands.

What a wonderful night at the track that was! Superb performances from all 4 of the track athletes in action tonight.

In the women's 400 metres, Harriet Pryke and Sarah Dowling obliterated their pbs yet again to take the silver and bronze medals with times of 56.46 and 57.34 respectively, behind Gemma Dawkins of Jersey who is an outstanding athlete. But Harriet and Sarah are also outstanding athletes and they proved it with a vengeance tonight! They have worked so hard over the past 2 years since Rhodes, and the absolute delight with which their performances were greeted by the entire Manx contingent told its own story. It was a wonderful moment to see them both on the podium together draped in the Manx flag. The battle for the bronze medal between Sarah and Orkney athlete Mags MacRae was desperately close and there was an agonising wait of 2 or 3 minutes before it was confirmed that Sarah had indeed got the bronze.

And this was followed by incredible performances from Rachael Franklin and Gemma Astin in the 1500 metres. Rachael ran the race of her life to take the silver medal in a time of 4.36.99, taking nearly 10 seconds off her pb - an extraordinary amount over 1500 metres. She put the eventual gold medal winner Eilidh Mackenzie (a terrific athlete who won gold and bronze in Rhodes 2 years ago) under the severest pressure all through the race, and was in with a real chance of winning until the final 100 metres or so. Rachael is another who has worked her socks off over the past two years and deserves all the success she gets and this was a truly fantastic performance. And so too was Gemma's performance to finish 5th in a time of 4.42.96 - a fraction outside her pb. She has had so many problems this year with illness and injury that have restricted her training and racing to a bare minimum, so to produce a performance like this was astonishing in the circumstances. What she will do when she is fully fit is quite a prospect!

Also in action tonight in the final of the women's Shot were Marit Zahkna and Charlotte Christian, who finished 6th and 9th with throws of 8.82m and 8.15m respectively. The best event for both of them, the Hammer, is tomorrow night. They have both had excellent training sessions today (whisper it quietly - Marit threw over 50 metres!) and are quietly confident for the Final tomorrow. Fingers crossed...

I'm off for a celebratory beer at Games Street now - more tomorrow.