Elton Tucker, Assistant Sport EditorMELBOURNE, Australia:
JAMAICA, THE 2002 bronze medallists, continued to show good early form in the netball competition at the XVIII Commonwealth Games with an overwhelming 69-30 victory over Barbados.
In registering their second consecutive win, the Sunshine Girlz led 22-5 at the end of the first quarter, 40-10 at half-time and 55-9 after three quarters.
Lanky goal-shooter Latoya Thomas, who has looked in fairly impressive form 'Down Under', led the way with 25 goals from 32 attempts while Elaine Davis and Simone Forbes both scored 22. Davis' tally came from 28 attempts and Forbes 30. Goal-shooter Lydia Bishop led the way for Barbados with 24 goals.
Today is a rest day for the netballers and they resume action on Monday (11:00 p.m. tonight Jamaican time) against Wales.
In other netball results, England beat Fiji 60-41, Samoa whipped Singapore 76-33, and Malawi surprised South Africa 57-56.
The national badminton players failed to advance from their group in the mixed team competition, but enjoyed themselves yesterday with 5-0 and 4-1 victories over Kenya and Uganda, respectively.
The promising cyclist Ricardo Lynch reached the quarter-finals of the men's sprint, but was then disqualified for not holding his line after a thrilling victory in the first quarter-final race against Matthew Crampton of England.
Lynch had earlier been warned for not holding his line in the last 200m of his first-round race. He lost that ride to Josiah Ng of Malaysia, but won heat one of the repechange (ride off featuring the first-round losers) to claim the last eight spot.
In boxing, Nicholas Walters won his featherweight bout easily against Christopher Defreitas of Trinidad and Tobago. Fighting from the red corner,
Walters, the Caribbean Amateur champion, peppered his opponent with accurate jabs to win 23 points to six. He will next
face Luke Jackson of Australia on Monday. Donald beat Namibia's Gottlieb Ndokosho 17-9.
Shooters Ronald Brown and Warren Blake placed 14th in the men's 10m Air Pistol event with a points tally of 1,090. India won gold with 1,154 from England 1,152 and Australia, 1144.
The men's table tennis team ended on a losing note to highly rated Singapore in the men's team event.
Jamaica who were beaten 3-0 are involved in a four-way play-off today for places 13th to 16th.
Swimmers Brad Hamilton, Tamara Swaby and Alia Atkinson were also in action yesterday but, as expected, did not get past the first round.
Hamilton was 22nd of the 41 swimmers who completed the men's 100m freestyle heats, clocking 53.05 for seventh in heat six. Swaby was eighth in heat four of the women's 100m butterfly clocking 1:08.28. The heat was won in Games record 58.49 by Australia's Jessicah
Schripper. Atkinson was 11th overall in the women's 200m breaststroke with a 2:45.81 clocking. She was seventh in the second of two heats for the event.
