First island games golds for Shetland on day two

It was a good second day for Shetland at the NatWest Island Games in Gotland with the first gold medal secured by cyclist Christine McLean.

And it was a double medal success in the evening for swimmer Felix Gifford, with a silver followed by a gold.

McLean took the top podium position in the women’s individual time trial, with a time of 57 minutes and 1.33 seconds, 22 seconds ahead of Guernsey’s Karina Bowie who took silver.

It was the fourth island games medal for McLean. She won a gold in the Isle of Wight in 2011 in the same event and a silver (women’s time trial team) and bronze (women’s time trial individual) in Jersey two years ago.

In the team trial event the women just narrowly missed out on a second cycling medal, with the squad of Lynsey Henderson, Christine McLean, Megan McLean and June Porter coming fourth overall.

In the pool Gifford, who has a busy week with many events to look forward to, secured the silver medal in the 200m butterfly final.

An hour later he went even better, winning gold in the 200m individual medley.

There was also an excellent result for young Megan Perry who finished fifth in the 400m individual medley final.

Also finishing fifth in the pool were the women’s 4x50m freestyle quartet of Katie Bain, Anne Hutchison, Emmie Hutchison and Jasmin Smith.

On the athletics track Faye Cox was agonisingly close to a medal in the final of the women’s 100m, finishing fourth behind bronze medallist Taylah Spence of Orkney.

Another former gold medallist, Whalsay’s Michelle Sandison, was also out of luck in the 10,000m final, where she also finished in fourth place.

Two of Shetland’s young field competitors, Leigh Nicolson and Connor McDonald, both turned in impressive results, finishing fifth in the women’s javelin and men’s shot put respectively.

In the football competition Shetland were unable to repeat yesterday’s victory, going down 3-0 to tournament favourites Guernsey in their second match. Shetland had fielded the same 11 which defeated Saaremaa on Sunday, perhaps surprising given the heavy schedule with three group matches in as many days.

Shetland’s table tennis team performed above expectation in the team event, eventually making it through to the fifth to eighth place play-offs.

In the badminton team event Shetland finished 11th of 14th, a strong result for a young squad.