GOLD, Australia!! The sailing team have really come through for Australia out at Weymouth and Portland, picking up the gold medal slack, and catapulting their sport into the mainstream. Today, it was the turn of Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen, who had an unassailable lead - and thus an easy last day, the day of the medal race - in the 49er skiff class. It's been quite a meet for the Australians out on the coast, a couple of hours drive from London. They join the already-feted Tom Slingsby as Australian gold medal winners in sailing and they join the list also populated by Anna Meares and Sally Pearson, all of them individual gold medal winners at London 2012. Well done, guys!
Not that it was in much doubt, but Jamaican pair Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake are through to the final of the men's 200m, and neither athlete raised much of a sweat. It must be an ominous and even demoralising feeling, running in the lanes on either side of these two men, seeing how easily they are doing it - when Bolt looks around to see what's going on around him, you know he's barely operating at 80% - in the Olympic semi finals, and dreading what sort of speed they're keeping up their sleeve for the final. Surely they're favourites to go 1-2 and probably will, barring any sort of disaster. Bolt ran 20.18, and Blake 20.0, but neither man ran a full race, coasting to the end. The upcoming final will be nothing short of epic.
Easy as you like for Australia's pole-vaulting superstar/Olympic champion, Steve Hooker. He cleared the qualifying mark - 5.5 meters - on his first attempt, where many others around him didn't. It must've come as a relief to Hooker, who last year, after his most recent international competition, admitted that he'd lost the nerve to jump. It's a tremendous leap of faith to soar through the air with the aid of what seems like nothing more than a flimsy pole. Hopefully, now that he appears to be back, another Olympic medal awaits.
We knew it was going to happen, and happen it did. The Boomers are out of the men's basketball competition. It came at the hands of the mighty Team USA - barring a major calamity, the gold medallists at London 2012 - but it wasn't a total capitulation and it didn't come without a serious fight by the Australians, that fight led by Patrick Mills, our only NBA star currently, with 26 points. It's been a golden Olympics for Patty, highlighted by the sensation buzzer-beater to defeat Russia in the last pool game. In the wash-up, it'll be said that Australia are perhaps just two or three NBA-caliber players away from being serious contenders. If only Andrew Bogut wasn't injured. That said, with our roster lacking those players from the best league in the world, did very well to reach the quarter final round.
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