Australia wins shooting and lawn bowls golds on day nine
Australia has added two more golds to its tally on day nine of the Commonwealth Games, with victories in shooting and lawn bowls.
In the women's trap shooting final, Laetisha Scanlan — who was defending the title she won in Glasgow four years ago — finished with a score of 38 out of 50 at the Belmont shooting centre.
Competing on her 28th birthday, the shooter from Clayton in Melbourne had another reason to celebrate, as she edged out Northern Ireland's Kirsty Barr by one shot to claim victory.
Sarah Wixey from Wales finished with a score of 28 for to take the bronze medal.
In the men's 25m rapid fire pistol finals at the same venue, Australia's Sergei Evglevski won a silver medal with a score of 28, two shots behind champion Anish Bhanwala from India, who set a new Games record score of 30.
Evglevski's teammate, David Chapman — who registered the old Games record of 23 for the event in Glasgow in 2014 — finished fourth on a score of 15.
Australia's Wilson scores final gold in lawn bowls
In lawn bowls, Aaron Wilson won the final gold medal on offer on the program with a 21-14 victory over Canada's Ryan Bester.
Wilson led 1-0 before Bester hit back with five straight shots to get a solid lead.
The Canadian led 7-2 after seven ends, but then the 26-year-old for St Arnaud in Victoria got on a run to clear out to a 16-8 lead after 15 ends.
Bester tried to keep in play, getting back to 16-10 and later 18-13, but when Bester missed the head with his last bowl of the 21st end to give Wilson two shots, it was all over — the Australian took his shirt off and ran down the green waving it over his head in a big celebration.
Wilson had qualified for the gold medal game, by beating England's Robert Paxton 21-16 in the semi-final.
Earlier, the Australian men's fours team were devastated after suffering a narrow loss to Scotland in the gold medal match at Broadbeach.
The home side looked on track to snare victory before Scotland produced four shots on the final end, snatching the win by two shots.
Going into the final end of the match, the Australian team of Barrie Lester, Brett Wilkie, Nathan Rice and Aron Sherriff led 13-11.
The Scots had the closest three bowls to the jack with their final delivery remaining, but instead of trying to set up a block for Australia's final bowl, Alex Marshall pushed right into the head to have the Scots lying four shots to the good.
Sheriff took aim, needing to clean out the Scots' four bowls to clinch the gold medal. However his heavy drive missed everything, leaving the Scottish side the champions with a 15-13 win.
Sherriff told ABC the loss was heartbreaking.
"[I'm] shattered you know," he said.
"We fought hard, got ourselves a good lead, but we knew they'd come back hard at us, and they did.
"And just to lose that way in the last set … yeah, just shattered at the moment."
"A loss is a loss no matter how it happens — we've put in a lot of effort over the last 18 months to get to this stage, and for the final game to end that way is a little bit shattering."
Bedggood, Stacey take bronze in synchro diving
Earlier, the diving team of Domonic Bedggood and Declan Stacey won a bronze medal in the men's 10m synchronised platform diving event at the aquatic centre.
Bedggood and Stacey finished with a total of 397.92 points, behind two English teams, gold medallists Tom Daley and Daniel Goodfellow (405.81), and silver medallists Matthew Dixon and Noah Williams (399.99).
The Australian duo trailed the two English pairs and Malaysia's Jellson Jabillin and Hanis Nazirul Jaya Surya going into the final round, but their last dive, a back two-and-a-half somersaults with two-and-a-half twists, scored 90.72.
Dixon and Williams scored 74.88 on their final dive to finish just over two points clear of the Australians, while Daley and Goodfellow only scored 61.05 to win the gold by just 5.82 points, a margin of 7.89 points to Bedggood and Stacey.
On Friday evening, Australia will have Georgia Sheehan and Esther Qin in the final of the women's 1m springboard, while Bedggood and Matthew Carter and a second Australian pair, James Connor and Kurtis Mathews, will compete in the final of the men's synchro 3m springboard event.
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ABC .net
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