Athletics: Weir pins on another campaign medal

It is 20 years since Bob Weir first stepped onto a medal rostrum in a Commonwealth Games. In Brisbane in 1982, at the age of 21, he won the hammer throw. Last night, in the City of Manchester Stadium the grand old man of British athletics took a bronze medal in the discus. The 41-year-old's second-round throw, 59.24m, secured third place behind Frantz Kruger of South Africa and Jason Tunks of Canada.

It was no great surprise that Daniel Caines, Weir's Birchfield Harrier clubmate, progressed to the final of tonight's men's 400m. The world indoor champion achieved what he has been promising to do all summer, breaking through the 45-second barrier for the first time to make the last eight as the fastest qualifier, in 44.98sec.

A medal for Lee McConnell was hardly expected on the eve of the Games but a place on the podium is looking to be an increasing possibility for the multi-talented Glaswegian woman who was a high jumper until two years ago. She was a highly promising high jumper too – three times a Scottish champion, no less. After three rounds of astutely paced running, the 23-year-old is now in the 400m final as the fastest qualifier.

McConnell finished strongly in the second semi-final, clocking a personal best of 51.29sec ahead of Aliann Pompey of Guyana and Catherine Murphy of Wales, who also ran a lifetime best, 51.36sec. It is just as well the final takes place tonight, because McConnell was so jaded by her 7.45am alarm call yesterday she almost fell asleep on a massage table in the bowels of the stadium as she waited for her quarter-final race. "It was a real shock to the system," she said.

It was no shock to any system that the men's 3000m steeplechase final proved to be a foregone conclusion. After just one of the seven-and-a-half laps a 30m gap had opened between the three Kenyans and the Englishmen, Welshmen and Canadian who comprised the rest of the nine-man field. By half-way the gulf was threatening to become a Mancunian Rift Valley. Stephen Cherono glanced over his shoulder to see where the nominal non-African challengers were and nearly cricked his neck. They were 60m behind at that stage.

In track and field, though, success is relative and the charge that Stuart Stokes mounted brought the Greater Mancunian home fourth in 8min 26.45sec, an improvement of nine seconds by the Bolton man who has been training in Morocco with the former world cross-country champion Mohammed Mourhit. Ahead of him, Cherono won the Kenyan championship, crossing the line 0.37sec before Ezekiel Kemboi in 8:19.41. The 19-year-old also claimed a family title. His brother, Abraham, 22, took bronze.