By Lachie Moorhouse<\/p>\n
A teenage triumph from race walker Isaac Beacroft stole the show on the penultimate day at Scotstourn Stadium, where middle-distance runner Sarah Billings secured Australia\u2019s first 800m medal in 36 years and teenage Para Athletics stars shone.<\/p>\n
19-year-old race walker Isaac Beacroft walked his way into Commonwealth Games history with a clinical performance in the Men\u2019s 10,000m Race Walk, breaking away with Stephan Ndangiri Kihu (KEN) in a two-man showdown over 25 laps.<\/p>\n
Beacroft slammed the accelerator down the back straight of the final lap, opening up a lead on his Kenyan rival before asking the crowd to stand and applaud in the home straight as he won gold in 38:45.51.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was kind of talking to me the entire race, telling me to go around and lead it. I was just saying \u2018in your dreams champ\u2019 and I knew he would come back around me,\u201d Beacroft said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s rare that we get to race with a stadium crowd because we are usually on the roads. Being on the track was really special for me and I think I thrived off those cheers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to be here and to have a good first Commonwealth Games experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kihu was forced to settle for the silver in 38:46.57, while Declan Tingay took fourth place in 40:03.39 after serving a one-minute penalty and Timothy Fraser was disqualified.<\/p>\n
Olympic pole vault champion Nina Kennedy added Commonwealth silver to her decorated resume with a 4.65m clearance; the same height as winner Eliza McCartney (NZL) who secured the title on countback.<\/p>\n
A first-attempt miss at 4.65m from Kennedy was all it took to separate the pair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201cI\u2019m superhuman most of the time but I\u2019m also human a lot of the time,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Commonwealth Games is so much fun and sometimes sport is about more than just the medals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Struggling to harness the cold and blustery conditions, Kennedy was all-class in defeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEliza handled the conditions better and that\u2019s why she is walking away with the gold,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople forget, Eliza is an Olympic bronze medallist and held the Oceania record for seven years. She is a really good jumper and I love competing against her, I\u2019m genuinely happy for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Australian record holder Sarah Billings landed her first senior international medal with bronze in a star-studded Women\u2019s 800m field, rounding out a dream championships characterised by confidence and class.<\/p>\n
Billings latched onto Olympic medallist Georgia Hunter Bell (ENG) who broke the race apart with 200m remaining to win in 1:59.51, as Billings held on for bronze in 2:00.61 \u2013 just 0.03-seconds behind silver medallist Lilian Odira (KEN).<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe that I\u2019m on the podium with them. They are incredible athletes and now I just have to believe that I am too,\u201d Billings said.<\/p>\n
Adding to the medal tally in the morning session was veteran wheelchair racer Eliza Ault-Connell who won bronze in the Women\u2019s 1500m T54, a staggering 24 years after her first Commonwealth Games medal which she won in Manchester in 2002.<\/p>\n
The event was a re-run of the original final in which Ault-Connell crashed through no fault of her own, this time taking bronze in 3:40.84 in the race which was won by hometown hero Melanie Woods (SCO) in 3:32.20.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ault-Conell led home debutant Mikaela Dingley who finished sixth place, before the pair returned for the Women\u2019s 400m T54 heats alongside Aimee Fisher, where Ault-Connell and Fisher advanced to tomorrow\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
Joining the Para Athletics podium party were teenage debutants Layla Sharp and Ayla Kowalczyk who both won medals in the Women\u2019s Long Jump T38, as Sharp leapt to a new Australian record of 5.06m (+1.7) for silver, while 15-year-old Kowalczyk produced the best jump of her life at 4.71m (+1.1).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy to get over five metres and my last jump was my best jump, so I\u2019m happy with that,\u201d Sharp said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing it in training and was waiting for it to come out in competition. It was so close to gold, which sucks, but we have a lot more competitions to come with the World Championships and Paralympics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Busy schedules finally caught up to Lachlan Kennedy and Torrie Lewis who held their own across the Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s 200m finals, with Kennedy taking home sixth place in 20.41 (+1.7) and Lewis clocking 22.88 (+1.7) \u2013 also finishing in sixth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sarah Carli produced a valiant sixth-place finish in the Women\u2019s 400m Hurdles when stoppin the clock in 55.85-seconds in the hotly contested affair which was won by Sanique Walker (JAM) in 54.00-seconds, while javelin thrower Cameron McEntyre finished in 11th place with a 72.34m throw to conclude the finals action.<\/p>\n
Brooke Buschkuehl led the Women\u2019s Long Jump Qualification when leaping to a season\u2019s best of 6.83m (+1.8) to qualify first for the final, as 19-year-old Delta Amidzovski also progressed with a 6.55m (+2.4) jump.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s Mixed 4x400m team of Luke Van Ratingen, Mia Gross, Cooper Sherman and Jemma Pollard also cruised into tomorrow\u2019s final, completing the circuit in a time of 3:15.21 to rank third overall.<\/p>\n
The Athletics and Para Athletics will return for one final day tomorrow at Scotstoun Stadium, with the first event scheduled for 10:05am local time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Lachie Moorhouse A teenage triumph from race walker Isaac Beacroft stole the show on the penultimate day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-836593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}