Commonwealth Games / Swimming: Foster heads revival

ENGLAND have won six swimming gold medals so far, six times their count from Auckland four years ago. With three silver and seven bronze medals as well, Adam Ruckwood, the 200 metres backstroke winner, summed up the team's display when he said: 'It is one of the best Commonwealth Games we have had.'

The two latest gold medals came from Mark Foster and Martin Harris, who won the 100m backstroke in a Games record time of 55.77sec. Foster took the 50m freestyle, his first major long-course crown.

In the women's 4 x 100m medley relay, Australia won in a Games record 4min 07.89sec, nearly five seconds clear of England's Kathy Osher, Marie Hardiman, Alex Bennett and Karen Pickering. James Hickman, of England, won the 200m butterfly bronze.

Wins for the Welsh featherweight Jason Cook and the Scottish light-middleweight Joe Townsley over Nigeria's Daniel Attah and Botswana's Ishmail Aryee added to a protest by African nations over a string of disputed verdicts in the boxing tournament. Attah was later seen head-butting a dustbin in disgust, while Aryee staged a minute- long sit-in on the canvas.

A Nigerian official, Frank Chukwuma Okonta, made accusations of racial and geographical bias after a meeting of African nations and would not rule out a boycott.