THE Newport boys are through to today's 200m semi-final although it was tough on both of them to qualify for differing reasons.

Doug Turner and Christian Malcolm race tonight in the semi-finals and, although Malcolm showed he had plenty left in the tank after finishing third in his heat, he was complaining before the quarter-final of feeling sick and having tight hamstrings.

He managed to lead most of the way and ran 20.61secs but is due to see the Welsh team doctor today about his troubles.

For Turner, there was no margin for error as he squeezed through to the semis in fourth place alongside New Zealander Dallas Roberts, both of whom had identical times of 21.24secs.

Namibia's Frankie Fredericks looks favourite for the event and Marshfield's Mancunian Darren Campbell looks in the sort of form that took him to an Olympic silver medal in Sydney two years ago.

Undoubtedly the best Welsh performance on the track was from Cardiff's Matt Elias who won his 400m hurdles semi-final in style, finishing as the fastest qualifier and running a new Welsh record time of 49.11secs into the bargain.

Elias is fully capable of winning a medal in tonight's final which includes hot favourite Chris Rawlinson, from England, but refused to put any pressure on himself by predicting where he will come.

It wasn't a great night for Wales on the track in the evening session. First, Emma Davies went out of the 800m semi-final despite running a season's best of two mins 3.93secs and then Matt Shone followed her out of the competition in the men's semi-final despite running a good time of one min 49.08secs to finish seventh.

Wales' Catherine Murphy was sixth in the 400m final, but Tim Benjamin was a happy man despite going out of the 400m semi-final on Saturday. He was seventh but vowed to come back stronger having achieved his ambition of reaching a Commonwealth Games semi-final.

Bedwas' Sonia Lawrence went out of the pole vault despite clearing a season's best height of 3.90m. Lawrence was hoping to add to the gymnastics bronze medal she won at Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

British stars Jonathan Edwards and Paula Radcliffe sent previous Games records crashing at the City of Manchester Stadium yesterday as they stormed to gold for England in the triple jump and 5,000m respectively.

* Christian Malcolm said his best friend Dwain Chambers was left shell-shocked after both he and Mark Lewis-Francis crashed out of the 100m final in dramatic style.

Kim Collins, from St Kitts and Nevis, won the Games traditional showpiece event in which England's hopes were dashed by a double injury blow.

Lewis-Francis was pressing Collins strongly at 50m, but then pulled up in agony with a hamstring tear.

Virtually at the same time Chambers suffered a recurrence of the leg cramps which scuppered his chances in the 200m final at the AAA Championships.

Malcolm and Chambers are rooming together in the athletes village, just as they do when competing for Britain, and the Newport flier said his friend had taken Saturday night's drama badly.

He said: "He was just gutted. We are close and it was hard for me and we were chatting about it, but he kept asking the question, 'why, why did this have to happen?' He went back to London last night to sort himself out."