IMAGE || MICHAEL WILLSON
Compiled by Christina Hansen
We’ve kept our ears to the ground and brought you the most quotable quotes from the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s action through the voices of those who matter most:
Cyclist Stephanie Morton talks about her gold medal achievement and Australia’s team spirit:
“Pressure makes diamonds. We’re going to keep rolling with that motto.
“We’ve all had our bumps and bruises and fair share of injuries, and we use each other as motivation – be there for your teammate when you do have an injury.”
Cyclists Nathan Hart and Jacob Schmid on their performance and missing out on the gold medal race:
“If something doesn’t go our way, we come out and fight even harder.
“I’m pretty stoked to get the opportunity to compete in the Commonwealth Games with the boys, and I think we executed it pretty well.”
Swimmer Cate Campbell discusses whether her relay win was redemption for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games:
“Oh yeah, this is the stuff of dreams and to have that in reality is something I’d never take for granted again.”
Hockey player Jodie Kenny talks about Australia’s victory over Canada and scoring the winning penalty goal:
“It’s good to get that one out of the way, even better to win. We had a lot of debutants playing their first Commonwealth Games so it’s good for them to experience that game.
“It’s one of my set pieces and I enjoy taking them, so it was nice to slot that away.”
Cyclist Ashlee Ankudinoff reflects on the team’s gold medal performance in the 4000m Team Pursuit:
“We set out really fast. We focused on what we had to do, we chased New Zealand down and we came home with the gold.
“It means everything to win gold. It couldn’t be better in front of the home crowd.”
Swimmer Bronte Campbell on breaking the women’s 4x100m Freestyle Relay world record again:
“We weren’t expecting that at all tonight. When we set the world record (at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games) it was a really quick time and we weren’t expecting to get near it tonight. I don’t know how that happened. I think there is something to be said about a home-crowd advantage. We’ve never had that before and we can see what that does for us.”
Swimmer Mack Horton reflects on how he backed up from his 400m Freestyle victory on Thursday night:
“I probably got through last night better than some of the others. The back-up was resting and recovering last night. Just moving onto the next thing which was today. I’ll take it all in at the end of the week, but the night and the next morning you’ve just to get up for the next thing.”
Cyclist Alex Porter talks about winning gold and breaking the world record:
“I’m ecstatic. I’m still lost for words. I think it will take a while to sink in.
“When we crossed the line I felt relief and we were ecstatic to see that we’d broken the world record.”
Squash player Ryan Cuskelly talks about his first victory at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games:
“It’s good to be playing on the glass court. We’ve been here at Oxenford Studios practicing for 10 days so it’s great to finally start and get a feel for the competition.
“We don’t usually get to compete in Australia, and I don’t think I’ve competed here at the highest level since 2012 or 2013. I’ve got a lot of family, friends and people I’ve played squash with here so it’s awesome to finally play in front of my fellow Australians.”
Swimmer Cameron McEvoy on setting the Commonwealth Games record:
“A Games record is always pretty nice. That men’s world record (3:08.24 set by the US at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games) is pretty untouchable at the moment.”
Cyclist Brad Henderson on winning the bronze medal in the Men’s B&VI 1000m Time Trial:
“Gold was on my mind when we crossed the finish line. But the personal best is all we could ask for.
“We were a bit disappointed about the fourth place in the UCI Rio Paracycling Track World Championships, so to come out here and show them what we were capable of was exciting.”
Swimmer Ariarne Titmus on winning silver in the 200m Freestyle:
“I can’t really complain. I didn’t expect to go out fast. I’m really excited. I wanted to win the gold but she was better tonight so I’m really happy with silver.
“To think that a year ago I wasn’t really even ranked in the world field for 200m and now I’m swimming 1.54, it’s really exciting.”
Swimmer Blair Evans discusses her turbulent swimming career and her bronze medal win:
“I’ve been through a lot, which has shaped me into the person I am now. I’m resilient, I’m really strong and I owe all that to my family and all my support team behind me.
“It’s bronze but it feels like gold to me.”
Badminton player Matthew Chau talks about the progress of his day one match:
“It was a relatively fast match and we were able to get it done. It’s nice to be the more experienced players on court and so we got the unforced errors. We’ve been in that position before, so it’s nice to be the experienced ones and get the free points.”
Badminton player Sawan Serasinghe on the second game of the match against South Africa:
“They (South Africa) did well, but I think we lost our concentration a bit as well. But from that point, we got our momentum back and went straight on to the finish.”
