Rebecca Adlington wins bronze but irritated by 'unpredictable' transport

Rebecca Adlington won England's first medal of the Games yesterday, a bronze in the 200m freestyle. By the end of the evening session at the SP Mukherjee aquatic complex, the swimming team had added two more medals to the tally. The men's 4x100m freestyle team took silver behind Australia and in the best English performance of the night, Michael Rock won silver in the 200m butterfly. For all her satisfaction at the result, Adlington was irritated by the "unpredictable" transport arrangements on the first day of the competition. She had to get up at 4am to make it to the pool in time for her first heat at 8.30am. "The buses take 45 minutes to get here so you spend most of your day on the bus," she said. "Ours got lost this morning so we were sitting there for 50, 55 minutes. The transport isn't running as smoothly as we all thought. You just have to get up early and get here, even if you are half an hour early. I literally ran through here this morning, swam down and managed to get the 10 o'clock bus back and get an hour's sleep." There were a few more of what the Games Organising Committee is calling "teething troubles" at the pool last night. The 4x100m, which started 25 minutes later than scheduled, was held up while attendants scooped a swarm of insects out of the water. "I pointed the bugs out before the race," said England's Liam Tancock. "We had a good laugh about it, but I'd never seen anything like it ever before." There were also birds in the rafters – a flock of pigeons was nesting in the roof. The other shame was there were so few spectators at the pool. Perhaps the local fans were still bathing in the afterglow of the opening ceremony, but crowds across all the venues on the opening day of the competition were disappointingly small. Admittedly the Indians did not have much to cheer – the only home competitors were the 4x100m team, who finished sixth. As Adlington herself said, with an optimistic shrug of her shoulders: "Hopefully they will pick up as the week goes on". As will she. The 200m is not a distance Adlington regularly swims – in fact this was the first time she has competed in it at an international meet. That being the case, she was surprised with her medal. Later in the week, when she goes in the 400m and the 800m, she will be expecting to do better. She left it late to take the bronze, trailing in seventh place throughout the first three lengths before finding a strong finish. She overtook her team-mate Jo Jackson, who finished fifth, in the final 25 metres. The two she could not get past were Wales's Jazz Carlin and Australia's Kylie Palmer, who won gold. Carlin's was the first medal by a female Welsh swimmer since 1974. "To come away with a silver, I am just so shocked," she said, understandably delighted. Scotland's David Carry also won a bronze in the 400m freestyle. Rock led from the front in his race. Stuck out in lane eight after a poor performance in the morning's qualifying heat he led until the final stretch, when South Africa's Chad le Clos pulled past him. Rock is 23, and a coming man on the team. He beat Michael Phelps over this distance in the Duel in the Pool in 2009, but this was his first medal at a major championships. He has just finished a law degree at Manchester University, and now he has switched his attention entirely to his swimming. "I had exams in January and May and I took a few weeks out of swimming completely," he said. "I think that's affected my fitness and maybe that's what caught up with me in the final 15 metres." The 4x100m relay team were also pipped on the last length, slipping behind Australia on the final turn.