Sporting Chance

STEVE GIBBS profiles the sports stars from Devon who will be hoping for medals on the other side of the world in the Commonwealth Games next month

FAR from being a sporting throwback to the bygone days of Empire, medals at the Commonwealth Games are competed for by almost one-third of the world’s population, and remain second only in global prestige to the Olympics. Naturally, athletes from Team Devon will again feature prominently on the podium in their home-from-home on Australia’s own Gold Coast this April.

Three sports and three influential clubs naturally loom large amongst the Devonian contingent, in Torquay’s King’s Bowling Club, Plymouth Diving and the Leander Swimming Club, but other local luminaries will shine brightly from the other side of the world.

DAVE KING (PLYMOUTH, HURDLES)

The British 110 metre hurdles champion knows that sport is all about peaking at the right time. Experience at the 2017 World Athletics Championships and an 11th-place finish at the European Indoor Championships, plus two new personal best times during the year, have set the 23-year-old up nicely for a tilt at success in Australia. He explains: “The goal is to make the final, and once you’ve made a final anything can happen. You can challenge for medals and that’s definitely my aim.”

DEAN BALE (BARNSTAPLE, RIFLE SHOOTING)

One of four shooting siblings, all members of the Braunton Target Shooting Club, Dean first picked up a rifle with the 1st North Devon Scouts. Only set to turn 21 in March, the computer science graduate and two time British champion finished fifth in last year’s Commonwealth Shooting Federation Championships – a warm-up for April’s main event – and now heads back to the Gold Coast for his first ever major senior competition.