Australia finished the Glasgow Commonwealth Games top of the medal table with 70 gold, 45 silver and 56 bronze, a total of 171 medals across ten sports. England was second on 29 gold. Canada was third. The Games closed at the Hydro on Sunday night with Simple Minds playing the ceremony.
The eleven days from 23 July produced 41 more gold medals than England managed, a gap wide enough that the table was settled long before the last session. What was still open on Sunday was how far the athletics team could push its own record.
The last day at Scotstoun Stadium delivered seven of those golds and 17 medals in all, the biggest single day Australian athletics has had at a Commonwealth Games. The previous mark was six gold and 11 medals, set in 1950.
Kurtis Marschall cleared 5.85m to win the pole vault, a Games record and his third straight Commonwealth title in the event. Matt Denny threw 67.73m in the discus. Jemima Montag walked a personal best 42:13.40 over 10,000m. Mackenzie Little won the javelin with 61.88m, Abbey Caldwell took the mile in 4:39.31, and Rhiannon Clarke won the T38 200m in 26.92.
The seventh came in the men's 4x100m relay, and it took most of the night to hand out. Lachlan Kennedy, Joshua Azzopardi, Calab Law and Rohan Browning ran 38.07 to beat Canada, who were then disqualified for an illegal changeover. Canada appealed. The jury deliberated for hours. By the time the disqualification was overturned and the medals were presented, it was close to midnight and fewer than 100 people were left in the stadium.
“That was crazy," Azzopardi said. "We'd been waiting around not really knowing what was going to happen.”
For Browning the result closed something off. "Four years ago I fell over in the heat and got this team DQ'd," he said, referring to Birmingham 2022.
Australia's athletics and para athletics program finished on 12 gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze, 34 medals in total. Jamaica was next on 10 gold, then England on six and Scotland on four.
Marschall's 5.85m passed the Games record of 5.80m Steve Hooker set in Melbourne in 2006, a mark that had stood for twenty years. Montag's 42:13.40 and Caldwell's 4:39.31 were both personal bests.
Australia sent 262 competitors to Glasgow and led the table from the opening weekend without being headed. The 70 gold medals came from ten sports, with swimming and track cycling the largest contributors alongside athletics.
