Tanner, Walsh and Palmer through to finals
Sam Tanner, Tom Walsh and Nick Palmer looked sharp in their morning qualifying efforts in the athletics stadium.
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Tanner strode confidently into the men's one-mile final while in the shot put Walsh and Palmer comfortably qualified.
The men's mile qualifers were headed by Josh Kerr, the newly minted world record holder over 1500m. The times were all exceedingly slow, with runners preferring to conserve their energy.
Tanner was the third fastest qualifier in 3min 59.31s. The second New Zealander entered in the mile, George Beamish, elected not to run after his fourth placing in the steeplechase a couple of days ago.
Walsh, already twice a Commonwealth Games shot put gold medallist, and a silver medallist back in his early days in 2014, headed the qualifiers today. His 21.03m effort marked him clearly as the man to beat. He used only one of his throws, did the business and stopped.
Palmer, who is Hawke's Bay-born but trains alongside Walsh in Christchurch, had three attempts, for 19.86m, a foul and 19.92m. He finished sixth of the 12 finalists.
In the heptathlon, Maddie Wilson finished the morning session wsith 5060 points and in sixth place, having had a good long jump but a poor javelin. Team-mate Briana Stephenson dropped to 10th on 4926 points. One event remains in the competition - the 800m.