Lauren Boyle wins Commonwealth Games gold - Stuff.co.nz

by IAN ANDERSON

ROBERT KITCHIN/ Fairfax NZ

The last thing Lauren Boyle had to do before bed - after putting her gold medal in a safe place - was set the alarm for a little after 5am.

The Commonwealth Games gold medallist had a morning training session to attend, less than 12 hours after winning the women's 400 metres freestyle final at the Tollcross pool in Glasgow.

"I'm coming in for training at 6:15 tomorrow morning," she told assembled media soon after her medal ceremony.

"It's not a joke - I was kind of shocked myself."

Boyle and the rest of the New Zealand team were due to train for a couple of days in Glasgow, now that the six-day swim competition was over, before heading home to prepare for next month's Pan Pacific champs in Australia.

The 26-year-old collected silver the previous night in the 800m freestyle final when beaten by Jazz Carlin of Wales, but Boyle turned the tables this morning in a superbly-executed race. She took the lead at the halfway stage and won in a time of 4:04.47s.

Carlin finished 0.69 seconds behind and Australia's Bronte Barratt was third in 4:06.02.

"I wanted to make sure that I had a pretty strong first half of the race," Boyle said.

"But I knew I had to have something left to fight, because ... you know, I kinda got kicked in the arse in the last 100 [metres of the 800 final]."

Boyle was worried about the stiff task of backing up in such a strenuous programme, but was surprised with how her body coped.

"I didn't actually feel too bad tonight - I think maybe I was expecting it to be a little worse than it was.

"It was a pretty hard double - eight and a half minutes of full-bore racing last night and then heats this morning and finals tonight. I haven't done that for a few years."

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