Macey takes gold in the decathlon
Tuesday, 21 March 2006 09:44England's Dean Macey today overcame yet more injury problems to win decathlon gold in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
Macey went into the final event, the dreaded 1500 metres, 37 points behind Australian Jason Dudley after taking just one throw in the javelin due to an arm injury.
That meant he needed to beat Dudley by around five seconds to take gold, and the 28-year-old easily achieved that to win his first major championship.
Jamaica's Maurice Smith was second in the 1,500m to snatch silver with Dudley forced to settle for bronze.
Macey had led for much of the two-day competition but tweaked his hamstring in the 110m hurdles this morning and was then overtaken after Dudley threw a new personal best of 69.27m in the javelin.
However, the world championship silver medallist's personal best over 1500m was almost 40 seconds quicker than Dudley's and the result was never in serious doubt.
It was England's second gold medal of the night on the track after Lisa Dobriskey claimed a surprise victory in the women's 1,500m in a time of four minutes 06.21 seconds.
Dobriskey produced a superb sprint finish over the final 100m to beat Australia's Sarah Jamieson into second, while Wales' Hayley Tullett took the bronze.
David Davies surged to a convincing victory in the 1500 metres freestyle to win Wales' first swimming gold of the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
The 21-year-old ended 52 years of Australian dominance of the event in convincing fashion in the absence of world record-holder Grant Hackett.
Finishing in 14 minutes, 57.63 seconds, Davies was almost 12 seconds quicker than his nearest challenger, Andrew Hurd of Canada. South Africa's Hercules Prinsloo took bronze.
Elsewhere in the pool, Michael Brown broke an eight-year drought for Canada at a major international swimming meet
with his country's first gold medal winning the 200-metres breaststroke final.
Brown came with a late finish to overhaul Australian Brenton Rickard by just one-hundredth of a second and win the final in a new Games record time of two minutes 12.23 seconds.
