About the Island Games

Jersey finished on top of the medals table after a glorious final day of five golds, bringing their total to 29.

Claire Lidster

There was an early boost at the athletic stadium - Our women’s 4 x 400 relay team of Hazel Le Cornu, Gemma Dawkins, Stephanie Le Cornu and Clair Lidster stormed home to the gold, some four second ahead of Guernsey, in a time of 3.55.81.

That’s just a second outside the Caymans record set in their games debut in 1999.

In pistol shooting, Dave Ward picked up two golds, pairing up with Derek Bernard for one of them and Bernard also picked up another bronze. That’s 24 medals for our shooters, twelve of them golds.

Then Jersey supporters were treated to a quite magnificent 1-2-3 in the Men's Triathlon – Paul Clements took gold, Daniel Halksworth the silver and Scott Pitcher the bronze.

Back to the athletics track, and Michelle Ryan then secured bronze in the Hammer with a distance of 36.53m. Jennifer Browne was fifth, two-tenths of a metre back.

The men’s 4x100 relay team finished seventh, and the 4x400 sixth. Thomas Brown was eighth in the 1500 metres, with Toby Edwards at the back in the same race.

Finally, Paul Holley and Andrew Muffin were eighth and eleventh respectively in the men’s 10,000 metres.

Once again, there was much confusion during the 10,000 metres, where officials yet again demonstrated little or no knowledge of how these events should be run.

After the winner, Kim Godtfredsen of Greenland, had passed the bell, it, and the lap counter were taken away, so the other 17 runners had to keep their own count or look for help from the organisers who were meant to be counting laps, but instead were shouting at each other. The official result wasn’t given out until half an hour after the race had finished…..

There were high hopes this morning for our table tennis mixed doubles pair of Paul Marshall and Kay Le Febvre as they bid for a place in the final, but despite winning the first set 11-7, they lost the next three to Gotland’s Hakan Ahlgren and Elin Schwartz, 11-6, 11-7, 11-5. Still, they have a bronze medal to take back home.

So a great climax to the week, which will perhaps help the entire squad to forget the many things that weren’t right because of the appalling organisation.

It’s the fifth time since the Games began that Jersey finish with the most gold medals.

Here’s to Aland in 2009!