AUSSIE SPIRIT AND RELAY GOLD GIVE AUSSIES GOLDEN GLOW
Ocober 4: There's nothing like a good comeback story and a good old fashioned relay win to get the green and gold veins pumping and the Aussie swimmers ticked those boxes in Delhi on a great opening night in Delhi last night. Fox Sports swimming expert, Ian Hanson runs his eyes over last night's opening night of swimming finals at the 19th Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
Kylie Palmer, the baby of the 2006 Games team in Melbourne and a member of Australia's gold medal-winning 4x200m freestyle relay team in Beijing won her first major international individual gold medal to open Australia's gold medal account in the pool.
It was an equal pb time of 1:57.50 and an amazing comeback from major shoulder reconstruction following her Beijing triumph.
The gold medal swim was also a triumph for Australia's leading coach Stephan Widmer who adopted Palmer after her 
previous coach John Rodgers took a role in Canada following last year's World Championships.
The 20-year-old Queenslander's victory will also provide a sweet taste for previous coach Ken Wood who nurtured Palmer in Redcliffe.
You also have to be full of praise for Ryan Napoleon, the 20-year-old Gold Coaster who went so close to gold inn the 400m freestyle after leading until the last stroke before being out-touched by Canadian Olympic star Ryan Cochrane - beaten by just 0.11.
Cochrane snatched the gold in 3:48.48 to Napoleon's 3:48.59 with the Canadian's victory, the first gold to a Maple-leafer in the 400m freestyle since Bob Pirie's win at the 1938 Empire Games in Sydney.
But for Napoleon it was a sweet podium finish - so close to gold but so satisfying after being dumped from the team after a pharmacist incorrectly labeled his asthma medication which had led to a positive doping offence - incurring a three-month ban.
With support from his family, his lawyers and a strong support group, Napoleon fought FINA's ruling with a successful appeal to the Sports Court of Arbitration and was re-instated to the team.
It's not often that an athlete thanks his lawyers in post match media interviews but that's just what Napoleon did on national television last night - and good on him.
Tactics were the key to the Australia's return to the Commonwealth Games 4x100m freestyle relay team with National head coach Leigh Nugent slotting the team's number one sprinter, Eamon Sullivan into the second leg and it proved to be a crucial move after Kylie Richardson again assumed the lead off role.
Richardson led off against the big guns with a split of 49.23 - touching a close-up fourth in a leg which saw individual sprint favourite Canadian Brent Hayden break the individual Commonwealth Games record in 48.18 (exactly the same time Michael Klim clocked in the famous 2000 Olympic relay) before Sullivan's sizzling 47.49 (the fastest split of the day) gave Australia a narrow lead over England.
WA's AIS-based Tommaso D'Orsogna churned out a 48.63 to keep South African veteran Roland Schoeman (49.09) at bay before 19-year-old James Magnussen from the NSW north coast town of Port Macquarie kept his head against England's Adam Brown and South Africa's Darian Townsend to storm home in a great anchor split of 48.57.
Magnussen, now the star in Brant Best's relatively new Macquarie University program in Sydney, will return home to Port a Games gold medallist and a young man who has taken a leap towards London in 2012.
It gave the Australian quartet a new Games record time but more importantly a huge confidence booster for the men's team who are crawling their way back on the international stage.
Australia has only lost the premier relay three times since Perth in 1962 - to Canada in 1974 and 1978 and the South Africans in 2006.
And what a swim by relatively unknown Queenslander Alicia Coutts - a quiet achiever who has also overcome her own adversity, stomach surgery which plagued her career after her fifth placed finish behind Stephanie Rice at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Coutts clocked her pb of 2:09.70 - a Games record in a huge pb and the second fastest Australian of all time behind Rice - and with Emily Seebohm taking silver it gave Australia its first quinella of the Games.