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07/08/2022 00:00, In Blog / Commonwealth Games /

In the women’s 1500m final Melissa Courtney was hoping to emulate her Gold Coast success where she claimed a Bronze. Having made it through as one of fastest non-automatic qualifiers, Melisssa was determined to put herself in closer contention this time around. In a slower run race, she was in contention after two laps, but as the pace increased got bumped and caught her ankle, she rallied in the last lap to come home 10th in 4.10.86. Melissa said:

"After the heats I was really disappointed with my run, so I was like right, i'm getting out hard to give myself a chance and I felt like I did that today, unfortunately it didn't pay off, but I really did try, I really wanted a medal, I knew it was going to be hard, but I have high expectations."

The final two Welsh athletes of the games to take to the track were Jenny Nesbitt and Beth Kidger in the women’s 5000m. As Eilish McColgan took the race out hard, Jenny and Bethan ran their own races and paced it well to start then pulling through a tiring field over the last 2km. Jenny finished 12th in 15:34.98 - nearly a minute quicker than her time on the Gold Coast four years ago - and was pleased with her race:

"I feel like I did myself justice, the way that I ran the race, I didn't go off like an idiot! it was nice to come through the field, rather than being pushed back. The crowd really helped me over the last mile or kilometre or so. I'm proud of myself for getting here after the journey i've been on."

Beth Kidger, who'd only had two weeks notice to prepare, closed well over the last kilometre to finish in 13th place, smashing her lifetime best by 12 seconds in the process, clocking 15:37:47. A happy Beth told us:

"I think it was about a 10 second PB so I can't complain, it was really good."

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