IOW DAY FOUR ROUND UP

Today we headed first to the Shanklin and Sandown Golf Club in the hopes of seeing the Falkland Islands men repeat their record-breaking day of yesterday. That success, with three out of four of our men scoring less than 80 was on the open spaces of the Freshwater Club's links course. Today, at Sandown the players faced a kind of challenge that the Stanley course does not prepare them for, namely trees, everywhere.

Perhaps as a consequence of these natural, but unusual obstacles, today's results for the men were not as outstanding as yesterday's, though still sufficiently good to leave them, as a team, in 9^th place, out of 18 countries.

Individually, Glenn Ross is in joint 23^rd position, after scoring 91 today. Troyd Bowles is in 32^nd position, with a score of 83, Kevin Clapp scored 89, and is in 43^rd position, and Ian Stewart picked up two points on his performance of yesterday to finish on 91 today putting him in joint 59^th place. With 71 competitors in total in the men's Open Championship, and two more rounds to go, these positions are by no means shabby.

After their disappointment yesterday, the women golfers had a good day, with Sarah Bowles scoring 85, which put her in joint 15^th position. With 45 players in the Women's Golf Open Championship, this is a true achievement for a Falkland Islander. Carole Lee, who has been struggling to get over the effects of sickness, also improved her performance, with a score of 97.

To add little further excitement to events at Sandown, the golf course was visited in the morning by His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, though sadly he arrived too late to see any of our team tee-off. The Prince also paid a visit to the badminton courts at Ryde High School in the afternoon, again arriving just too late to see any of the Falkland Island team in action, though the team's mascot, Soraye March was able to present the Prince with some Falklands badges.

On the badmitnon court, the Falkland Islands team had already had a fairly busy day by the time of the Prince's arrival. In the ladies singles, Tiffany May played a very strong competitor from the Faroes and went down 21-6, 21-2, while Sonya Arkhipkina who has had a fairly difficult and dispiriting time against some hard opponents both in singles and doubles, perhaps surprised herself by making a very experienced competitor from the Isle of Wight play very hard to win 21-10, 21-10. Getting into double figures, against such competition is very commendable indeed. Doug Clark and Michael Brownlee also showed a lot of determination and controlled aggression to hit double figure scores, in a very tight match against an Isle of Man pair, losing finally 21-11, 21-16. Earlier, Duane March and Dominic Jaffray played hard against a very strong Faroes team but went down 21-2, 21-6.

Before leaving for the leafy surroundings of the Sainham Goshill Shooting Club this morning, Saul Pitaluga had been somewhat pessimistic about his chances of getting into the top six in the Automatic Ball Trap shooting event today in order to qualify for the final. In the end, after shooting pretty consistently until the 5^th round, Saul came away with joint 10^th position in the event, and a score of 97. Bono McKay who had a disappointing third and fourth rounds could only\manage a score of 75.

Finally, our Cinderlla competitor, Sorrel Pompert Robertson, out on her own in the swimming competition, succeeded in knocking one and a half seconds off her personal best for the 50m freestyle, coming home in 33.78 seconds.

Tomorrow sees the third round of the golf competition which will start at approximately 10am (UK time) with the men back at Freshwater and the women at Sandown.

Swimmer Sorrel Pompert Robertson has her busiest day with two demanding events: the 100 Individual medley event, and the 100 metres freestyle.

Saul Pitaluga and Bono McKay will be shooting Universal Trench all day, and Mathew Vincent will be participating in the Skeet individual competition.

At the Ryde High School, our badminton team will be on court throughout the day for mixed doubles. The pairings will be: Sonya Arkhipkina and Dominic Jaffray, Anna Luxton and Doug Clark, Cheryl and Duane and Michael Brownlee and Jo Turner .

The Falkland's football team will have their final match and maybe their best chance of a win, against Alderny. The result will decide who ends up in 13^th and who in 14^th place overall, and will also determine the winner of the Small Islands Cup sponsored by Patrick Watts.