Both Steven Takahashi and Alysha Newman ended their events on large mats in Australia.
Both will leave the Gold Coast and the 2018 Commonwealth Games with medals around their necks.
Takahashi captured silver on Thursday in wrestling in the men’s 57 kg event. The accomplishment was made even more special by the fact that he matched an accomplishment of his father Ray, who was a silver medalist in Brisbane in 1982. Ray now coaches his son.
Steven defeated Jan Combrinck of South Africa in the quarter-finals. From there, he took on Ebikewenimo Welson of Nigeria in the semi-finals and won by fall. Takahashi’s run ended in the gold medal match in a loss to Rahul Aware of India.
Newman dazzled the crowd on her way to a brand new Commonwealth Games record in women’s pole vault. The Londoner equalled her Canadian record and increased the Commonwealth best by .13 metres, as she cleared 4.75 metres.
Eliza McCartney of New Zealand cleared 4.70 metres to win silver and Nina Kennedy of Australia took bronze with a final clearance of 4.65 metres, but the day belonged to Newman.
She jumped up two spots from her Commonwealth Games finish in 2014 when she won a bronze medal. Newman also ended up in the bronze medal position at the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016.
London’s Damian Warner did not enjoy the same kind of success that Newman and Takahashi found down under. Warner was in excellent shape to take a run at repeating as Commonwealth Games champion in the Decathlon, but failed to clear a height in the pole vault and ended up withdrawing from the final two events in his competition.
Heading into the final weekend, Canada sits in fourth place in the overall gold medal standings. In the overall standings, Canada is in fourth place with 74. Newman was part of a 14-medal haul on Friday alone and helped to take Canada a few steps closer to their set goal of 100 medals at the outset of the Games.
Australia has been the class of the competition on their home soil. They sit with 168 total medals. England is second in total medals with 99.
The final events of the Games will be held Saturday.
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