Blind bowlers revel in the inclusive Games

There was plenty of the famous Commonwealth spirit in their parting embrace but Gloria Hopkins was not holding her feelings back yesterday as she accepted a 15-6 defeat to Susan Njani on the sun-blazed bowling lawns of Heaton Park, Manchester. "Disgusted with myself. Couldn't get started. Could have blown it now," she said.

The competitive edge is like that when adversaries who are worlds apart – Mrs Hopkins is a 64-year-old former coalmine worker from Llanelli, and Miss Njani a diminutive Kenyan 35 years her junior – share the handicap of being blind.

Until recently, dedicated tournaments were staged for some disabled athletes. Mrs Hopkins, a reigning Olympic champion, won her mixed pairs gold in Adelaide this year, not Sydney in 2000. But Manchester's Commonwealth Games are the first to embrace elite athletes with disabilities into their main sporting programme. Medals won will count towards national totals, and winning matters a lot.

It is more of a seismic leap than it seems. Not until Manchester have both sets of winning athletes been able to participate in the same opening and closing ceremonies and take positions on the same, accessible rostrums.

Tanni Grey-Thompson of Wales, whose 800m final will follow the able-bodied event, recalled a relatively recent experience this week. "My first paralympics were in Seoul [in 1988] and one competitor was asked, 'Doesn't your success really depend on who's pushing the wheelchair?' "

Playing lawn bowls without sight can be an intricate matter and they will tell you that no two bowlers take the same approach. Most competitors take their bearings from a piece of string, which they bowl the jack along, and markers which indicate lengths to their able-bodied partners – their eyes and ears.

That's the theory. But even Mrs Hopkins will admit that she is a little obstinate. She had her sight until diabetes took it 18 years ago and still bowls from the instincts she developed before then, refusing to use the string and – once her partner has helped her position her feet – declining to take advice on anything but the distance she must bowl.

Miss Njani, who has been bowling for only six months, is a little different. Her partner, Michael Oluchi, conveys the line she must bowl her woods by kneeling before her and tapping his knee, allowing her to judge by sound.

Mrs Hopkins went into the game with confidence. She had beaten the New Zealanders here in a warm-up on Tuesday and had a big Welsh following. But though she propelled the woods more astutely than most good club players, all was in vain.

"She was totally disorientated. She couldn't find the line," said her partner, Vireen Davies. "She's always good on the length. She concentrates on it more – as if the distance in her mind is more important than the delivery. But she won't take any more help on the line – we've all tried but there's no changing her."

Miss Njani was modest. "I've been concentrating very much. My eyes, my mind, my body must be there," she said. But her journey had only just started. To win gold or silver she must beat the English champion Ruth Small.