Big-hitter Clarke has golden day at last
Tokyo is next on agenda for man who spars with Joshua
WHILE England’s big names have been strangely fallible at these Commonwealth Games, their biggest man of all proved himself unbeatable.
It wasn’t particularly pretty, but in the context of Frazer Clarke’s slowburning career the finer details of his super-heavyweight final with India’s Satish Kumar aren’t especially important.
What mattered was the gold medal that will enable him to take a sizeable step out of Anthony Joshua’s shadow, given his main point of fame prior to this trip was as Joshua’s sparring partner.
It’s a term Clarke dislikes — ‘I spar with him but I am no- one’s sparring partner,’ he said on Saturday night — and it is a label he should now be able to shed. That much is the least this 26-year-old deserves after the perseverance he has shown to reach the top of a podium.
Indeed, it is a full eight years since he joined the British set-up in 2010, only to find Joshua and then Joe Joyce in his way. Missing out to his mate Joshua for London 2012 was fair enough by most estimations, including his own, and he has never shared any grumbles about Joyce going to Rio 2016 because that choice returned a silver.
But it is commonly believed within the team that Clarke was also good enough to medal or even win in Rio — he actually won the test event there — and so it has been tough for him to stay upbeat through all the snubs. He laid that bare after his medal ceremony, saying: ‘ There were times when I thought maybe this is not for me. I had the injuries, knock-backs and I’ve been pipped to the Olympics twice.’
The bright thought that has kept the darker ones at bay is that this Olympic cycle is his opportunity. To that end, the Commonwealth Games are always an important staging post and he delivered.
‘My time will be in Tokyo,’ he said. ‘I believe everybody’s got an allotted time frame, I just took a bit longer — I’m a slow developer. As you can see tonight I’m not perfect, far from it, but I’m getting there, slowly.
‘I hope people do know me now and recognise me, I’ m Frazer Clarke, big Fraze from a little town called Burton-on-Trent, and if you don’t know me now then get to know me because you’re going to be seeing a lot more of me over the next few years.’
With that declaration, he was off to find a phone.
‘I just want to get back on FaceTime to my 16-month-old daughter and show her this medal,’ he said. ‘She won’t have a clue what it is and probably ain’t interested but in 20 years she can turn round to her friends and say, “My dad did this”.’
A touching moment on an extraordinary day for the boxing team, in which they had a man or woman in seven of 16 finals and won six of them, with Lisa Whiteside, Galal Yafai, Sandy Ryan, Peter McGrail, Pat McCormack and Clarke all add- ing gold to Paige Murney’s silver and two medals from a day earlier.
It is their biggest boxing haul in the history of the Games and combined with other sports made for England’s best day on the Gold Coast with 11 golds. Most notably, Zharnel Hughes celebrated ‘redemption’ after taking 4x100m relay gold two days after winning the 200m only to be disqualified.
‘It’s been a long week man, but at the end of it I’m still a gold medallist,’ he said after his team of Reuben Arthur, Richard Kilty and Harry
Lowther fury over her ‘punishment’
MELISSA LOWTHER says the Commonwealth Games Federation was wrong in not letting her compete in Tuesday’s cycling time trail after a Team England admin error meant she was not entered for the event. Lowther, ninth in yesterday’s road race, said: ‘They basically punished the rider instead of the team and I don’t think that was fair. Thank God my family didn’t come out.’ Aikines-Aryeetey crossed in 38.13 seconds, ahead of South Africa and Jamaica.
‘I’m really happy with that and proud of it. I told them, “Just get me the baton and I’ll do what I have to do, that it’s going to be redemption”, and it was just that.’
The men’s gold was followed by a truly bonkers one for the patchedup women’s 4x100m team, anchored across the line by a long jumper in Lorraine Ugen.
In a stunning turn of events, Ugen was told on Friday night that she was needed after Corinne Humphreys was injured in the semifinal. On the back of barely 10 minutes’ baton practice i n the warm-up, Ugen held off a surge from Jamaica’s double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson to win gold after a large lead was built by Asha Philip, Dina Asher-Smith and Bianca Williams.
Further golds followed for England’s David Luckman in the shooti ng, Liam Pitchford and Paul Drinkhall in the men’s doubles table tennis and Ross Wilson in para table tennis.