Walsh has to settle for silver in shot put

New Zealand athletics hero Tom Walsh looked on target to win his third consecutive Commonwealth Games gold medal after four rounds of the shot put in Glasgow.

Walsh had produced a 21.03m effort in his first round and that mark had survived four rounds. It was nowhere near his personal best, which is 22.90m, but looked good enough. Then on the fifth round, up stepped Nigerian Chukwuebuka Enewechi. His best throw of the night had been 20.82m,, so he was in the vicinity.

Sure enough, he popped out a 21.07 effort to place himself just in front of the New Zealander.

Walsh, who'd had three fouls in his five attempts, finished with a 20.51m effort. It seemed he just didn't have the big one in him on this day.

So the 34-year-old Walsh, who won silver in Glasgow in 2014, then gold on the Gold Coast in 2018 and in Birmingham in 2022, was the silver medallist. He may not think particularly kindly of Glasgow. After all he's won four indoor world championship gold medals, but when the event was held in Glasgow in 2024, he was consigned to silver.

Walsh said taking home silver 'wasn't what I came here to do' and that his nerves got the better of him.

'Nerves aren't a bad thing necessarily, right? But I just didn't handle them the way I wanted to. Nerves mean you care and you want to do well and I just didn't look after them. I kind of couldn't control them, I couldn't use them, I couldn't use them as positive energy.'

New Zealand's other entrant in the shot put was Nick Palmer, who was sixth with a best effort of 20.27m. Palmer was consistent but never threatened to push for a medal.

In the 800m semi-finals, there were New Zealand hopes for James Preston, despite the fact that he'd struggled into the semis as the slowest of the four fastest losers who advanced.

In his semi, Preston opened with a pacy first lap of 50.63s, but seemed sapped by the effort and could only place last in his race with a time of 1min 48.84s, almost five seconds slower than the the New Zealand record he set in Germany in 2024 when he broke Peter Snell's mark, set way back in 1962.

He finished with 1min 48.84s, nowhere near the sort of performance New Zealanders know he can produce at his best.

After the first day of the decathlon, New Zealand's Max Attwell was placed ninth of the 12 competitors with a total of 3849 points. The leader after five events was Damian Warner of Canada with 4353 points.

Attwell was good in the 100m hurdles, long jump and 400m, but lost a lot of ground on the leaders in the shot put.