Article by Hans van Leeuwen and Zoe Samios, courtesy of the Australian Financial Review.
Welcome to day six of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where a bronze medal for Jemima Montag in the 20km walk heralds the start of the Games’ transition from pool to track – although the Aussie women’s 4x200m relay team kept the medals coming. Read on to see what you missed overnight.
The big story | There are 32 sports in the Summer Olympics, but the marquee events are unquestionably the swimming and the athletics. The Games get a kind of rhythm from this: the first week is all about the pool, the second is all about the track. And with Jemima Montag’s determined and inspirational bronze medal in the 20km walk on day six, we are now striding from one into the other.
There’s still a bit of swimming to come, of course – the pool meet runs until Monday morning (AEST). Friday morning Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariarne Titmus duly reminded us of where the action still is for Australia, with gold in the 4x200m freestyle relay.
Australia hopes the Dolphins can keep this up in the final days of swimming – Cam McEvoy and Kaylee McKeown will be hunting for gold on Saturday morning – because we’re a lot less successful when it comes to athletics.
Since 1896, we’ve won 21 gold, 27 silver and 28 bronze on the track. In the pool, it’s 71 gold, 73 silver and 77 bronze. Our 221 swimming medals put us second overall behind the US – our 76 in athletics rank us 12th.
But because athletics is such a smorgasbord of wildly different sports, we send a much larger team to win that smaller number of medals. Australia is fielding 74 athletes on the track, compared with just 40 in the pool.
There will be masses going on, particularly while the two events overlap over the weekend. But keep coming back to The Australian Financial Review for the slickest summary of all the highs and lows, the surprises and disappointments.
While you were sleeping
Here’s what else happened on Thursday:
- Windsurfing: Australia is guaranteed a medal on Friday, after Grae Morris qualified fastest for the three-man final in Marseille. At school, he had to choose between rugby union and windsurfing – sounds like he made the right call.
- Hockey: The Australian women’s team is already safely in the quarter-finals. Now it looks like the men’s team may follow suit after a 5-0 win over the Kiwis.
- Golf: It was a nightmare start for Min Woo Lee, who tied last in the first round at Le Golf National. Lee finished five over par and dead last in the 60-player field – a result he described as “garbage”.
- Gymnastics: Yep, she did it. Superstar US gymnast Simone Biles won her second gold of her “redemption tour”, fending off Brazilian Rebeca Andrade in the all-round artistic gymnastics event.
- Water polo: Belief is starting to take hold that this could be the year the Sharks finally find that podium. The men followed up a shock win over Serbia with a 9-8 victory against France. The team has never come higher than fifth.
- Basketball: The Opals were on the ropes after losing to Nigeria. Now the women found form against Canada, romping home with a 70-65 win. That avenged the day of doom on Tuesday when the Canucks punished no less than three different green and gold teams.
Other highlights (and hurdles)
A gender controversy in the women’s boxing arena reached new heights on Thursday after Algerian Imane Khelif defeated Italian Angelina Carini by abandonment just 46 seconds into the match.
Khelif was disqualified from the women’s world championships in 2023 after returning “elevated levels of testosterone”, but the International Olympic Committee disregarded advice from the International Boxing Association that the boxer had advantages over other female competitors.
Her first match against Carini was abandoned after two punches were thrown. The Italian was seen yelling “it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair” and later told the media she had to “safeguard” her life.
Australian boxer Marissa Williamson-Pohlman, who lost to Hungarian Anna Luca Hamori on Thursday, would have faced Khelif in the quarter-finals of the women’s 66kg boxing. She weighed into the controversy, declaring athletes who have failed eligibility tests should be banned from competing against women.
Chinese Taipei female boxer Lin Yu-ting is also competing in Paris – she was previously disqualified from the IBA-run world championships for failing similar gender eligibility tests.
Khelif and Lin have not publicly identified as transgender or as having “differences in sexual development” (DSD).
Who’s in town
The pair of Australian businesswomen who put significant cash into Australian Olympic sport have been in Paris to see the fruits of their investment. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart has spent plenty of time at the swimming, one of her passion projects. Rowing is another sport she favours, and Thursday she made the trek out to the nautical stadium in eastern Paris. She wasn’t, alas, rewarded with the spectacle of an Aussie medal.
Harvey Norman chief executive Katie Page is a big supporter of showjumping, and has been braving the fierce heat to watch the Australian equestrians strut their stuff in Versailles. Her company also sponsors golden girl Ariarne Titmus, and she was there for both medals. To kick back, she’s also watched beach volleyball and the opening ceremony. It may have rained on that parade but, says Page, “I’ve never had so much fun with the French in my life”.
Also at the pool was Queen Mary of Denmark, ready with a congratulatory hug for the Australian 4x200m gold medal winners. We wonder if there was a special squeeze for fellow Tasmanian Ariarne Titmus.
Village people
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Newly minted Olympic legend Jessica Fox, with a gold each in the kayak and canoe, found a new use for her sporting trinkets. If you want more, read Hans’s account of why she is this sport’s greatest ever athlete.
Live like an Olympian
If you’re a competitor in the 20km walk, you are battling as much against yourself as your race rivals. Our new bronze medallist Jemima Montag reveals the tactics and techniques she uses to beat the pain barrier.
Dive deeper
Behind many a great Olympic athlete or team lurks a top-class team of number crunchers back home. Zoe Samios has written an absorbing account of what Australian sport’s data analysts do, and how.
Photo finish
One of the toughest assignments at any Olympics is to compete against the home team, who have a not-so-secret weapon in their wild and raucous fans. But the Australian men’s water polo team passed the test on Thursday night, beating France 9-8.
