Talk of the Games, Day 6: 'I want as much pressure on me as possible'
Some of the best quotes from Day 6 of the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games.
A selection of what the athletes have had to say on the sixth day of action in Glasgow.
Khiew Hoe Yean swam his first 1500m Freestyle in four years in a two-man race in front of a vocal crowd at Tollcross International Swimming Centre. The Malaysian record holder led home Connor MacDonald of Cayman Islands in the slowest heat of the longest race in the pool:
“It hurts a lot. I'm going to be honest, I haven't swum a 1500 for a long, long time. I was counting my strokes a lot. I always count my strokes: 32, 33, 32, 33 ... just counting through and telling myself a bedtime story because 1500 is a long, long time."
Medal first, dissertation next. The last week in July was always going to be memorable for Isabella Brown, but it turned out to be much more than she envisaged. The English weightlifter was due to graduate from her history degree at the University of Nottingham on Tuesday, but had to defer her dissertation for a year:
“They’ve let me delay my dissertation which I was supposed to hand in yesterday, but I was a bit too busy winning a silver medal today.”
Scotland's world-record holder Josh Kerr cut an incredibly relaxed figure after breezing through his heat in the Men's Mile on Wednesday morning:
“I kind of thrive in the pressure environment. I want as much pressure on me as possible. I'm here to show up and get a gold medal for Scotland, and hopefully we can put more people on the podium than just me.”
Uganda have been something of a surprise package in the Women's 3x3 Basketball, and their exploits have been winning fans back home for Jane Asinde and her team-mates:
“We have families back home who are praying on their knees. We’ve had a lot of encouraging messages - they believe in us and they know we could do this against experienced, great players. The energy back home is all the way up there.”
Jasmine Daunakamakama secured Fiji's first-ever Commonwealth Games Women's Boxing medal and was keen to attribute her victory to her culture and the spiritual belief in 'mana', shared across Melanesian and Polynesian communities:
"I believe there's two sides of us. There's an internal war inside all of us where we're constantly fighting between the ego and our true self, which is the spirit, and so, the mana is the will to overcome the fears because the fears is what's not real."
Scotland's Angharad Evans took gold in the 200m Breaststroke final, one day after topping the podium in the 100m. But it wasn't easy:
"I had a sneaky look at the 150m mark, saw I was ahead, and then just held on with everything I had. I could hear the crowd, and it hurt, but it was the best kind of pain. It's strange because I felt completely numb, yet I also felt everything... That's what makes the 200m so rewarding when you do well. You have to fight for it, and it really hurts. Weirdly enough, though, I actually enjoyed swimming it. I turned at 100m and thought, 'You know what? This is fun. Painful, but fun.'"
Men's 3x3 Basketballer Dwayne Laurier-Ogunleye of England and his team-mates are planning to unleash themselves on Scotland's biggest city to celebrate their back-to-back golds, after beating Australia 19-17:
“Glasgow, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
The Australian Women’s 3x3 Basketball champions are planning a golden celebration of their own, after overcoming Uganda 21-11 - a commemorative tattoo, says Marena Whittle:
"We’re talking about maybe getting a little unicorn, or a cone… you guys seem to like putting a cone on a statue, right?"
Another member of the team, Amy Atwell, says what happens at the party should stay at the party:
"If you see our coach later on with a beer in hand and a kilt on, you didn't see him."
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