Three Golds Medals As NZ Team Finish Hugely Successful Commonwealth Games

A successful Birmingham Commonwealth Games for squash with three gold medals and many milestones along the way.

The three golds, for Paul Coll in singles, Coll and Joelle King in mixed doubles and finally King and Amanda Landers-Murphy in women’s doubles were huge highlights but were part of a team effort all the way.

Four players; Lwamba Chileshe, Temwa Chileshe, Kaitlyn Watts and Abbie Palmer all made their Commonwealth Games debut while head coach Glen Wilson and assistant coach/manager Paul Hornsby were a massive part of the success.

Lwamba, 23 and Temwa, 22 each won first singles matches and were close in their second rounds. They also combined to go through a round in doubles as well before falling in three games to a highly rated Malaysian pair.

For Watts in the singles she was strong in her first round victory however against third seed and top 20 player Joshna Chinappa (India) she gave it everything, but was eventually beaten in four games.

In doubles Watts and Palmer had an unfortunate draw where they faced the experienced Scottish pair of Lisa Aitkin and Georgia Addeley (Scotland) where they were beaten in straight games.

All four will have learned plenty from their experience and will no doubt come out stronger for the future.

For Coll the journey to the final was relatively straight forward as the top seed and silver medallist from the Gold Coast. He dropped one game to Welshman Emyr Evans in the round of 16 but from there it was smooth sailing with straight game wins over Adrian Waller in the quarters and Saurav Ghosal in the semis.

The final against Joel Makin was always going to be tough with both players superbly fit. Eventually Coll prevailed in five games in 102 minutes to claim the gold medal.

For King in singles, she was a target for allcomers as the PSA Tour looks to have a few rising stars from Commonwealth nations. King was pushed in a huge 80-minute contest in the quarters by Lucy Turmel and then found herself beaten in four games in the semi-finals against Canada’s Hollie Naughton.

In the bronze playoff King found herself up against one of her long-time rivals Sarah-Jane Perry who was backed by a vocal crowd. It duly went the distance as King had opportunities but was beaten 14-12 in the fifth to walk away without a singles medal.

She then had to pick herself up from the two disappointing losses to return for the mixed doubles where Coll appeared to inspire King as he threw himself all over the court and the pair played some fantastic squash. They didn’t look threatened on their way to claiming gold over Waller and Alison Waters.

In a busy 24 hours, but with great support from the rest of the New Zealand team King then combined with Landers-Murphy to first win their women’s doubles semi-final and then play out a tough straight game win over Waters and Perry 11-8, 11-8 in the final.

The second gold for King gives her a tally of eight medals in total over four Commonwealth Games. It also puts her equal with five golds alongside Valerie Young, but King has the most medals of any New Zealand woman. The eight squash medals overall mean she is equal with Australia’s Rachael Grinham, although King has more gold (five in total).

Meanwhile the two New Zealand officials at the Commonwealth Games were heavily involved in some important matches.

Waikato’s Glenn Carson was the referee for both the men’s doubles final and the women’s singles final while Marlborough’s Janet Uday in her first Commonwealth Games was referee for a singles quarter-final and the marker for the women’s bronze medal match.