Strachan defends swimming gold

SHETLAND has gained two more medals on the fifth day of competition in the NatWest Island Games 2013.

Andrea Strachan stood on the podium once again when she claimed the gold for the 100m breaststroke.

Strachan’s winning time was nearly two seconds ahead of the nearest competition as she broke her own record from the last island games and retook the medal at 1:08.56.

Later in the evening, Strachan added another silver to her collection in the 50m freestyle, only 0.06 seconds behind Ashley Yearwood of Bermuda who clinched the gold.

In other swimming events, previous medal winner Felix Gifford came seventh in the 100m freestyle event as well as fifth in the 100m individual medley.

Team-mate Callum MacGregor was just 0.25 seconds behind Gifford in the same event prior to pairing up with Gifford – alongside Donnie Price and Jake Swanson – in the 4 x 100m medley relay, where they finished in fifth place.

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The women’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay – Amy Harper, Anne Hutchinson, Emmie Hutchinson and Andrea Strachan – were also fifth with a time of 4:07.19.

On the golf course, the Shetland men’s team finished the competition in ninth place, with Lee Carter, Jordan Leask, Ross MacDougall and Mark Penders racking up a score of 787.

In the individual events for the golf, Leask, Carter, MacDougall and Penders ranked 32nd, 39th, 40th and 42nd respectively at the end of the day.

The squash team event saw Shetland face the two Channel Islands in the round robin competition. Five games are played in each round, and Shetland lost 4-1 in both furious rounds, with Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda yet to face.

Finally, Scott Jamieson placed 16th in the arduous mountain bike cross country event, finishing in just over an hour and 45 minutes.

Compared to the medal yield from the previous day of competition, the fifth night of the Island Games may seem mildly quiet for Shetland, but there is much more to come from the athletes of the isles.

Iwan MacBride