A strong day in the pool, on the mat, in the field on the court, on the track and through the air sees Australia end day five of the Commonwealth Games 20 medals clear at the top of the table.
Australia won 35 medals on day five in Birmingham — 11 gold, 12 silver and 12 bronze — in sports across the board from judo to lawn bowls.
The Australian team now has 106 medals (42 gold), followed by England in second on 86 medals, with 31 gold.
Emma McKeon won her 18th and 19th Commonwealth Games medals and her final individual race ended with bronze as she finished behind teen sensation Mollie O'Callaghan and teammate Shayna Jack in the 100m freestyle final.
McKeon added her fifth gold of the Games when she swam the final freestyle leg of the mixed 4x100m medley relay alongside Kaylee McKeown, Zac Stubblety-Cook and Matthew Temple.
Australia's women also swept the podium in the 800m freestyle — with Ariarne Titmus, Kiah Melverton and Lani Pallister.
There were 16 medals in total for Australian swimmers on the penultimate day of the program, but the team is well positioned as focus shifts towards track and field.
Nina Kennedy won Australia's first field medal of the Games with gold in the pole vault, after her bronze at the world championships last month.
The track team pulled their weight too, with 17-year-old Jaydon Page winning silver in the men's T45-47 100m, and Rhiannon Clarke finishing third in the women's T37/38 100m final.
There were also medals of every variety in 3x3 basketball, with Australia's men's and women's wheelchair sides winning gold and silver respectively, while the men's and women's 3x3 teams won silver and bronze respectively.
Fiji-born Eileen Cikamatana won gold in the women's 87kg weightlifting with a Games record snatch/clean-and-jerk total of 255 kilograms, why Chris Flavel and Damien Delgado took home silver in the men's B6-B8 pairs lawn bowls.
Australia had a second straight day with a gold medal in judo, with Aoife Coughlan's win over Jamaica's Ebony Drysdale Daley in the -70kg gold medal match following Tinka Easton's -52kg day-four win.
There were three more judo bronze on day five, with Jake Bensted (men's -73kg class), Katharina Haecker (women's -63kg) and Uros Nikolic (men's -81 kg).
Australia's gymnasts also had a banner day with Georgia Godwin claiming her fifth medal of the Games, but she was pipped to her third gold by compatriot Kate McDonald on beam.
Tyson Bull nabbed a silver medal in the horizontal bar, while James Bacueti (men's vault) and Emily Whitehead (women's floor routine) added bronze medals to the tally.
Look back on the action as it unfolded with our live blog:
Key events
- 🥈 Athletics: Silver for Jaydon Page in the T45-47 100m final!
- 🥇Swimming: Australia wins gold in the mixed 4x100m medley to end today's program
- 🥇 Weightlifting: Gold for Eileen Cikamatana
- 🥇 Swimming: Another all-Aussie sweep in the women's 800m final
- 🥇 Swimming: Aussies bookend the podium in women's SM10 individual medley
- 🥇 Swimming: Aussies go 1-2 in men's 100m butterfly S10
- 🥇 Athletics: Pole vault gold for Nina Kennedy
- 🥈 Swimming: Aussie Sam Williamson finishes just behind English champion Adam Peaty
- 🥇 3x3 basketball: Aussies winning all over the place
- 🥉 Athletics: Rhiannon Clarke wins bronze in T37/38 100m final
- 🥈 Swimming: Matthew Temple in a tie for second in 100m butterfly
- 🥇 Swimming: Mollie O'Callaghan tops an all-Aussie podium in 100m freestyle
- 🥈 Lawn bowls: Silver for Australia's Para-men's pairs team
- 🥇 Swimming: Elizabeth Dekkers wins, with Brianna Throssell third in 200m butterfly
- 🥉 Gymnastics: Bronze for Emily Whitehead in floor final
- 🥈 Swimming: Bradley Woodward 0.01 off gold in 200m backstroke
- 🥉 Swimming: Chelsea Hodges gets women's 100m breaststroke bronze behind South African 1-2
- 🥉 Gymnastics: James Bacueti wins vault bronze!
- 🥇 Gymnastics: Gold and silver for Australia on beam!
- 🥇 Judo: Coughlan gets gold; Bensted, Nikolic and Haecker win bronze
Live updates
By Jon Healy
See you tomorrow!
It's the last day of swimming in Birmingham, but the athletics will be picking up steam to compensate. Here are a couple of things to look out for on day six…
- Swimming: The heats start tonight at 7:30pm, and we'll be back n the early AM to blog the finals, starting with the men's 200m IM at 4:07am AEST. The final event of the meet is the women's 4x100m medley relay, which should be a fitting way for our women's team to show their brilliance one last time.
- Athletics: The first port of call tomorrow morning will be Brandon Starc in the men's high jump final, with the blue-riband men's and women's 100m finals to wrap up the action.
- Hockey: Hockeyroos are up at 6pm tonight against Scotland. The Kookaburras face South Africa at 6am tomorrow.
- Cricket: Australia faces Pakistan at 8pm tonight. They were supposed to have two warm-up matches against them last month, but Irish weather intervened.
- Cycling: Sam Fox, Daniel McConnell and Zoe Cuthbert will go around in the men's (8:30pm) and women's (11pm) mountain bike cross-country finals tonight.
- Beach volleyball: Australia's men's team of Chris McHugh and Paul Burnett take on Rwanda in their group match from 9:30pm tonight.
Until then, Kelsie and I will bid you farewell. See you before the rooster crows.
By Kelsie Iorio
Athletics: Hope you're running headfirst into your Wednesday with this much energy
Olivia Breen has good reason to look this joyful — she won gold in the T37/38 100m — but here's hoping you're feeling this good about life today.
By Kelsie Iorio
T20 cricket: Results from overnight
England has defeated South Africa and New Zealand jagged a win over Sri Lanka in the preliminary rounds of the T20 overnight.
Australia plays Pakistan from around 8pm AEST tonight in the final group match — the Aussies are two from two so far so are all but locked in to play semi-finals.
By Jon Healy
Beach volleyball: Clancy and Artacho del Solar remain perfect
After beating Sri Lanka 2-0 in their opener, Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar backed it up with a 2-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago's Suraya Chase and Phylecia Armstrong.
In fact, they only lost 13 points in the match. Amazing effort and they remain at the top of Pool B.
By Kelsie Iorio
The mullets have entered the chat
Tell me you're Australian without telling me you're Australian.
By Kelsie Iorio
Athletics: Strong start for Crase in the heptathlon
There's still another day of the heptathlon to go, but Taneille Crase is sitting in third at the end of day one.
Reminder — the heptathlon is:
- 100m hurdles
- High jump
- Shot put
- 200m
- Long jump
- Javelin
- 800m
Fun fact: Taneille is studying a Bachelor of Education at the moment. Busy busy!
By Kelsie Iorio
Athletics: Aussies unlucky in T33/34 100m final
Robyn Lambird, Sarah Clifton-Bligh and Rosemary Little have been outpaced in the T33/34 100m final, coming in fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.
There were six competitors in this event — three Aussies and three from England — so the rivalry there was absolutely fierce, but the English athletes have gone one, two and three this time around.
Lambird looked like a really good chance for the bronze through the bulk of the race but was overtaken just before the line.
By Kelsie Iorio
🥈 Athletics: Silver for Jaydon Page in the T45-47 100m final!
What a run from the 17-year-old!
Jaydon Page has come in second in the men's T45-47 100m, just behind England's Emmanuel Temitayo Oyinbo-Coker.
One of the commentators reckons he "now has a silver medal to go along with his mullet" and they are exactly right. Hair goals.
By Jon Healy
🥇Swimming: Australia wins gold in the mixed 4x100m medley to end today's program
Olympic champion Kaylee McKeown got them started with backstroke, trailing only the two teams who started with male swimmers; then Zac Stubblety-Cook took the breaststroke; Matthew Temple gave Australia its first lead when he came up from the turn in the butterfly; and Emma McKeon typically brought it home in the freestyle leg for her 13 Commonwealth Games gold medal.
That race was always theirs to lose, and it just never looked like happening.
They wound up winning by 2.68 seconds to Canada, and 2.73 to England.
By Kelsie Iorio
Athletics: Taryn Gollshewsky just misses medal in discus final
So close but so far for Aussie Taryn Gollshewsky, who has just finished fourth in the women's discus final.
Her best distance of 56.85 was just a couple of centimetres off bronze medallist Obiageri Amaechi of Nigeria.
Another Nigerian athlete, Chioma Onyekwere, won gold with an impressive 61.7 ahead of England's Jade Lally who takes the silver medal.
By Kelsie Iorio
🥇 Weightlifting: Gold for Eileen Cikamatana
Another one!
Eileen Cikamatana has won gold and set a Games record in the women's 87kg weightlifting division, finishing on a total of 255kg.
This is Eileen's first gold medal for Australia, but not her first gold overall — she actually represented Fiji at the 2018 Games on the Gold Coast.
The transition meant she couldn't compete in the Tokyo Olympics, but she's in the green and gold now and we're lucky to have her.
By Jon Healy
🥇 Swimming: Another all-Aussie sweep in the women's 800m final
Ariarne Titmus, Kiah Melverton and Lani Pallister led the pack for the entire race and that's how they ended up.
Titmus broke the Commonwealth Games record of 8:13.59, with her teammates finishing behind her in a real team effort. Melverton would've also broken the Games record, if not for the woman finishing three seconds before her.
They were all in consecutive lanes too, making it that much more imposing.
By Simon Smale
Gymnastics: Men miss medals on parallel bars
Australia's men fell just short of medals in the parallel bar competition.
Mitchell Morgans came fourth and Tyson Bull was hampered by a bad dismount to finish eighth.
By Simon Smale
Weightlifting: Ebony Gorincu finishes sixth
Former bobsledder Ebony Gorincu finished sixth in the women's 76kg weightlifting competition.
She lifted 93kg in her snatch and 113kg in her clean and jerk for a total of 206kg.
Canada's Maya Laylor lifted 228kg, a new Games record, to win gold.
By Kelsie Iorio
Athletics: Gold to Uganda in the 10,000m
Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo has danced his way over the line of the men's 10000m final, convincingly winning gold in a season-best and Commonwealth-Games-record-breaking time of 27:09.19.
Silver and bronze go to Kenyans Daniel Simiu Ebenyo and Kibiwott Kandie.
Australia's Ky Robinson finished sixth with a personal best time of 27:44.33.
Kiplimo is still dancing and running around in circles. HOW DO YOU HAVE THE ENERGY MY FRIEND. It's so joyful to see.
By Jon Healy
🥇 Swimming: Aussies bookend the podium in women's SM10 individual medley
Jasmine Greenwood jags the gold, holding off Canadian Paralympic champion Aurelie Rivard, with Keira Stephens winning bronze.
Lakeisha Patterson was fifth.
By Jon Healy
🥇 Swimming: Aussies go 1-2 in men's 100m butterfly S10
Col Pearse gets the gold, and Alex Saffy, the youngest member of Australia's para-swimming team at just 16, gets silver.
England's James Hollis gets bronze, just 0.18 of a second ahead of another Australian, Will Martin.
