The Games: day six update

Swimming: With seven gold medals in his sights, Ian Thorpe made a powerful start in his opening 400m freestyle heat, winning comfortably with a time of 3:47.24mins. Thorpe, who is on a four year winning streak and has won every major championship since 1999. The 19-year-old was the fastest qualifier ahead of fellow Australian Grant Hackett. The final will take place this evening.

"I was really happy with all that," Thorpe said. "All I wanted to do was to keep it even all the way through the race and hopefully that was a good indicator for tonight."

Shooting: Wales claimed their first gold of the games today, when Ceri Dallimore and Johanne Brekke won the women's 50m rifle prone pais by just one point from the Scottish duo of Sheena Sharp and Susan Jackson. England's Helen Vincent and Linda Smallbone claimed bronze.

"I knew if me and Ceri did our own thing and shot like we should the pair of us were always going to make it", Brekke said afterwards.

Athletics: England shrugged off the loss of their best sprinters to ease into the final of the men's 4x100 metres relay at the Commonwealth Games. The absence of Dwain Chambers and Mark Lewis-Francis - who both suffered leg injuries in Saturday's 100 individual final - had little impact on the relay squad as they qualified third fastest behind Nigeria for Wednesday's final.

The quartet of Marlon Devonish, Jason Gardener, Allyn Condon and Darren Campbell clocked 39.06 seconds, just 0.11 behind the Nigerians, anchored by 100 silver medallist Uchenna Emedolu, and 0.01 behind Jamaica who won the other heat. The final takes place on Wednesday, the final day of track and field at the Games.

Men's walking: Australia's Nathan Deakes completed the double today with a convincing victory in the 50 kilometres race. Deakes, 24, fought off cramps and a mid-race thunderstorm to add the 50km title to the 20km he won two days ago.

The Australian, who was disqualified for lifting at last year's world championships in Edmonton, completed 10 loops of the Salford Quays circuit in three hours 52 minutes and 40 seconds. New Zealand's Craig Barrett finished four minutes behind to take the silver and Canada's Tim Berret got the bronze, almost 12 minutes behind the winner.

Lawn bowls: New Zealand have sent home disabled lawn bowler John Davies after an allegation of sexual harassment. Sixty-year-old Davies, who is an amputee, was competing in the physically disabled triples event at the Games. Organisers said the incident happened in a public area but was seen to be a "serious error of judgement."

"We had a complaint yesterday (Monday) about inappropriate behaviour by one of our team members from a female volunteer," New Zealand team chief Dave Currie told reporters. "We spoke to the organisers, we spoke to the volunteer, we investigated it with the other members of the team and, as a result of that, we have removed that athlete from the team."