medals

After a relatively quiet day, the first medal was claimed by the men’s 3×3 basketball team just before 17:00 BST.

A couple of hours later, three more followed in the space of five minutes.

The women’s wheelchair 3×3 basketball team took silver; Evans added her second gold – and third medal – of the Games in the 200m breaststroke; then Woods claimed gold in the women’s T54 1500m.

Shaw then joined in with bronze in the women’s S9 100m freestyle before MacInnes was edged into second place in the women’s 200m butterfly to take her second individual silver of the meet.

Around the same time, MacKenzie was leaping to long jump bronze, before the haul was completed in the pool when Evans and MacInnes teamed up with Katie Shanahan and Evie Davis to take silver in the women’s 4x100m medley.

Three more further medals are guaranteed in boxing – with fighters in semi-final action on Friday – while further prospects remain in athletics, bowls, cycling, judo and weightlifting.

Shanahan missed the chance for a second chunk of metal in the last race of the night as she competed in the 4x100m mixed relay team who finished fifth, though they did set a new Scottish record.

Part of the team was, surprisingly, poster boy Scott.

He received a hero’s welcome as he returned, racing second after Evan Jones and before Evie Davies, but ultimately the field was too strong.

Earlier in the evening, Sean McCann finished eighth in the men’s 400m freestyle final, Lucy Grieve was seventh in the women’s 50m butterfly final and Matthew Ward broke the men’s 50m backstroke Scottish record on his way to seventh in that final.

With four fourth places in Birmingham in 2022, Richards was looking for his first Commonwealth medal to complete the set of Olympic, world and European podium positions.

Wales opted for an entirely different quartet in the pool in the final after Kieran Bird, Harry Milne, Medi Harris and Meghan Higgs had qualified fourth fastest in the heats.

Sutton and Taylor had qualified for their respective individual semi-finals in the 100m backstroke and 100m breaststroke, but both pulled out with a full focus on the relay.

The policy paid off and Taylor, 17, brought Wales back from fifth to third with a brilliant final leg.

Earlier, Rose Williams finished fourth in the women’s S14 200m freestyle final.

The S14 category covers swimmers who have an intellectual impairment, which typically leads to the athletes having difficulties with regard to pattern recognition, sequencing, and memory, or having a slower reaction time, which impact on sport performance in general.

Tyler Melbourne-Smith finished sixth in the 400m freestyle final, while Lewis Fraser qualified for the 100m butterfly final to be staged on Sunday evening.

Scotland claimed three medals in a magnificent 45 minutes in the pool to kick-start the hosts’ Commonwealth Games in fine style in Glasgow – and added a second gold of the day an hour later to almost take the lid off Tollcross in the city’s east end.

Poster boy Duncan Scott started the rush, defending his 200m individual medley gold from Birmingham four years ago by slicing a chunk off his own Games record.

Then Para-swimmer Stephen Clegg added silver in 100m freestyle S13 – with brother James fourth – after battling back from an injury-ravaged year.

And Katie Shanahan upgraded her 2022 Games bronze to silver in the 200m backstroke.

The frenzied scenes around this clammy building eventually abated, only for Faye Rogers to spark more bedlam with a rampant gold in the 200m individual medley SM10.

The drama all unfolded at the same Tollcross pool where 29-year-old Scott won the first of his now 14 Games medals in 2014.

Scotland’s most decorated Commonwealth Games athlete was a wee boy then – just 17 – but is a big man now and was under pressure to deliver a first rendition of Flower of Scotland at this staging.

And he delivered sensationally, streaking away from the field in the backstroke and breaststroke legs before closing it out in the freestyle.

Watching from the call room, Clegg could not fail to be roused.

There were times over the past year where the 30-year-old thought he might not be at these Games, and that his swimming career was over.

But he made it to Glasgow and managed to add another silver to the won he claimed in the 50m event four years ago.

Shanahan came home from that Birmingham Games with two surprise bronze medals so silver was an upgrade for another athlete who has come through tough times in recent months.

Her Scottish team-mate Holly McGill just missed out on the medals in fourth.

That success would have been sufficent to sate the home crowd, but Para-athlete Rogers delivered one of the most dominant performances of the night to clinch a second gold for the hosts and spark a second airing of the anthem.