Le Clos's tally up to seven
TEAM South Africa's one-man medal machine Chad le Clos speared two more Commonwealth Games gongs last night to push his tally in Glasgow to seven. He scraped bronze in the 200m individual medley and then achieved another third place in the 4x100m medley relay, alongside Sebastien Rousseau, winning his fourth medal here, Cameron van der Burgh, with his third, and Leith Shankland.
His haul may have lacked the lustre of gold, but Le Clos had to swim his guts out in both races to reach his dream of seven medals. He hung on desperately to fend off fast-finishing Australian Thomas Fraser- Holmes in the final freestyle leg, out-touching him by one-hundredth of a second.
"That was hard, I was very tired," a relieved Le Clos said afterwards. "I just knew I had to finish hard."
In the relay Van der Burgh took South Africa from sixth to fourth, and then Le Clos climbed to third in the penultimate butterfly leg, a position Shankland comfortably defended in the final freestyle leg.
Le Clos matched Ian Thorpe for seven medals at a single Games, although he was behind on colour – the Australian had six gold and a silver in 2002.
Le Clos now has 12 career Games medals, joining Roland Schoeman as SA's most decorated Commonwealth athlete.
Schoeman, 34, finished his fifth Games a disappointed man after failing to add to the two medals he had won earlier in the gala.
He touched sixth in the men's 50m freestyle, a result he fears might cost him his funding from the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc).
Schoeman was also disappointed at not making the relay team, which would surely have given him his 13th medal to equal the all-time Games record by a male competitor, Australian swimmer Mike Wenden.
"There's not much difference between Leith and I in the freestyle, and it would have been nice for the coaches to actually have acknowledged me." If the 4x100m freestyle relay on the second night was used as the yard stick, Shankland was more than half- a-second faster than Schoeman.
SA's swimmers ended the Games gala with 12 medals and fourth overall in the sport. That is nearly half the 26 medals won by Team SA, which had slipped back to seventh spot on the medals table by last night.
With swimming now finished, the big question is: how many more times can Team SA get to the top of a podium?
There is a chance in lawn bowls, where the open trips team of Deon van de Vyfer, Roger Hagerty and Derrick Lobban are in contention, having qualified for the semifinals after beating Australia 21-9 and drawing 10-10 with New Zealand yesterday.
In athletics, Wayde van Niekerk qualified for tonight's 400m final, and Andre Olivier cruised past the 800m heats.
In the long jump, Rushwahl Samaai and Zarck Visser qualified second and third behind favourite Greg Rutherford of England, the Olympic champion.
But decathlon gold hope Willem Coertzen withdrew with an injured ankle.
Super-heavyweight boxer Paul Schafer lost his quarterfinal contest on a cuts stoppage in the second round to Nigerian Efe Ajagba, who was taller and quicker.
Today three fighters compete in quarterfinal clashes, and victory will secure them silverware. Boxing's losing semifinalists are guaranteed bronze medals.
In other action, the netballers and men's hockey team downed Wales, 61-41 and 5-1 respectively, but neither are likely to get into medal contention.
Phillip Buys and Mariska Strauss ended 13th and 10th in the men's and women's mountain bike races. In wrestling, Adem Digovich, Gerald Meyer and Bokang Masunyane failed to get into the medals. - David Isaacson
