More from Wednesday night

This is a slightly more detailed look back at last night's action on another memorable night for the IOM at Mariehamn's Wiklof Holding Arena.

Starting at 6pm were both the women's Hammer and High Jump finals at opposite ends of the stadium, which made it a bit difficult to follow both events closely. I opted to watch from the High Jump area, zooming the video camera in on Marit and Charlotte whenever they were throwing. I missed some of their throws though.

In the High Jump, Hollie Bass looked to be jumping very well and had no problems with first-time clearances of the lower heights. She failed with her first attempt at 1.56m, perhaps distracted by a nearby spectator shouting very loudly just as she was about to jump. Her second attempt cleared the bar easily, and when the bar went up to 1.59m there were only 4 competitors left (although I didn't realise that at the time). Things didn't look good when Hollie failed with her first two attempts at 1.59m, but to everyone's huge relief she cleared it at the 3rd attempt. The bar then went up to 1.62m which would have beaten Hollie's pb, and she was so close to clearing it with her 3rd and final attempt. She was convinced she had lost out on 3rd place on countback and was really down in the dumps, and it was only when she went over to congratulate the Gotland jumper that she realised their results were identical and they had shared 3rd place. Despair turned to elation in a few seconds! Hollie is an extremely popular member of the team, which was obvious from the reception she received when she stepped onto the podium to collect her medal later in the evening.

At the other end of the stadium, Marit Zahkna and Charlotte Christian were in action in the Hammer competition, where the main opposition was always going to come from Island Games record holder Amy Church of the Isle of Wight. Marit broke the record with her first throw of over 46 metres, and she steadily built on this. By her third throw she was up to over 48 metres, although Church had now also thrown over 46 metres to better her previous record. Marit's throwing was really consistent and most if not all of her 6 throws were legal. She was the last of the 11 competitors to throw in each round, so when Church failed to improve on her best throw with her final attempt, the gold medal was in the bag for Marit, and she was able to try and put the icing on the cake with an attempt at 50 metres with her final throw. She was unable to do this but was nevertheless thrilled and delighted with her gold medal and a best throw of 48.89m - as were the entire team. That will take some beating as an Island Games record! It was great to see her Dad there too to provide support and technical advice - he was a former hammer thrower. Marit was so proud to win a gold medal for the Isle of Man and received a great ovation from the team.

Charlotte Christian also produced a terrific performance to finish in 4th place with a best throw of 37.44m. She would have liked to have broken through the 40 metre barrier but was still very happy afterwards. It's only her second Island Games, she is still very young and improving rapidly and she has a bright future. The bronze medalist threw 41.30m, which will be well within Charlotte's range this time in 2 years.

There then followed the women's 5000m final, in which Gemma Astin produced a performance that almost defied logic. It has been well documented that Gemma has been unable to train at anywhere near full capacity for most of this year, and up until a month or so ago she was unable to do much more than easy jogging. Even though things have improved a lot recently, she has still had to reduce most of the harder sessions to no more than about 75% capacity. She is an extremely determined character though, and went off with the early leader Johnson-Deeley from Jersey for the first 3 or 4 laps, a fair way ahead of her main rivals Perrio and Scholes of Guernsey who were in 3rd and 4th at that stage. After about 5 laps Gemma suddenly dropped back from the leader and was quickly caught and passed by the Guernsey duo. At that stage I really feared that the wheels were about to come off and Gemma looked to be really struggling, but I ought to know her better than that by now. She gritted her teeth and battled relentlessly on over the next few laps, closing in on the tiring young Jersey runner and passing her to move up into 3rd place with around 1k to go. Still I wondered if her lack of real quality training might suddenly catch up with her in the closing stages, but the opposite happened. While everyone else tired, Gemma just got stronger and she absolutely caned the last lap to take the bronze medal in a time of 17.51.23, nearly 9 seconds inside her pb! The look on Andy Fox's face after the race was a picture - a mixture of sheer delight and open-mouthed amazement!

I'm off up to the track now for the morning session and it will be busy. We have Rachael Franklin in the 800m heats, Tom Riley in the 100m semis, Andy Duncan and Tom Richmond in the 1500m heats (Andy's first action of the week, apart from keeping the troops entertained), Ben Brand and Peter Richardson in the 400m semis, and Harriet Pryke and Sarah Dowling in the 200m semis. Once again - GO MANXIES!!