Commonwealth Games 2010: England team struck down by 'Delhi belly'
Nearly 50 of the 243 England athletes in Delhi at the moment, across a range of sports, have been struck by nasty Delhi belly and a diarrhoea bug, a situation initially denied by team officials as they struggle to keep up team morale.
But the extent of the medical problems became apparent on Wednesday night when Halsall, the 50m butterfly gold medallist, was pulled from the pool by the team doctor after failing to qualify for the 100m butterfly final.
She was led away to be sick and was close to fainting before visibly shaking when presented to the media minutes later. She earlier won 100m freestyle bronze but tired after leading at the turn.
John Atkinson, England swimming’s team leader, told Telegraph Sport that 20 per cent of the swim team have been affected by illness although estimates were later revised upwards to be about 40 of the 66 strong team.
“There have been swimmers who have come down with short term sickness bugs but we are dealing with everyone in isolated cases. We can manage with that and do our best to get them back in racing,” Atkinson said.
Other sources put the sickness estimates as close to a third across the entire England team while team doctor Ian Gordon said that “everyone had been affected acutely”.
Last night Halsall said she hadn’t felt well for more than a day and tweeted “Drugs test dirolite [sick] and bed for me hopefully just a 24hr bug.”
Rebecca Adlington comfortably qualified for Thursday's 800m freestyle final and was hoping she could keep her energy levels up.
“Most of us girls have got it. You don’t feel bad in itself, it’s just that I can’t eat and I’m going to the toilet every couple of minutes, but it could be a lot worse.”
However, gymnast Reiss Beckford was able to shrug aside the illness to push his England colleague Luke Folwell in the men’s individual all round gymnastics competition and cause an upset one-two result over the more fancied Australians.
Folwell ended up the victor after nailing some of his more difficult routines to amass 85.550 points, 100 ahead of Beckford, who won the silver.
“The difference between me and Reiss was the tiniest margin, perhaps just a little step on a dismount. I’m just delighted we came out with these medals,” said Folwell.
But at the hockey the sickness has started to affect the men’s team, who easily accounted for Trinidad and Tobago 4-0, but showed signs of struggle in the hot and humid conditions.
Head coach Jason Lee said, “I’ve not been looking forward to this tournament since we first saw the schedule and we struggled with the conditions at times today. When you only have a squad of 16 players you are going to struggle with illness and injury. We’ve had illness in the camp”.
Rick Aylett, the director of Delawere North, the catering firm with the contract at the athletes’ village strongly denied that the illness was caused by food contamination.
The news of the sickness detracted from a day of triumph across a range of sports for Team England. James Goddard’ won a gold medal in 200m backstroke and the home nations finished the evening with two 4x200 freestyle medals when England won bronze in the women’s final while Scotland snatched silver in the men’s event.
At the shooting Steven Scott and Stevan Walton beat their Indian rivals by one shot to win the men’s double trap pairs in a Commonwealth record of 189 points. Team mate James Huckle added a bronze in the 10m air rifle.
Ukraine-born British champion Myroslav Dykun triumphed in the 66kg greco roman wrestling final, overcoming Canadian Jack Bond in the final in less than 40 seconds.
Track cyclist David Daniell won a silver in the controversial keirin race, while George Atkins won a silver in the 40km points race.
He finished just ahead of Mark Christian who claimed the Isle of Man’s first New Delhi Commonwealth Games medal with his third placing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/commonwealthgames/8047053/Commonwealth-Games-2010-England-team-struck-down-by-Delhi-belly.html
