The Summer Olympics are over for another year and there will be some huge talking points to come out of Australia’s performance in Rio following yet another disappointing display. Our team netted just eight gold medals among 29 medals overall.
While the Aussies matched their efforts in London four years ago, where they also won eight gold medals among 35 medals overall, the tally in Rio was their lowest at a Summer Olympics since Barcelona in 1992.
It was well short of expectations, with the country having targeted a top-five finish with at least 16 gold medals as forecast by the Chef de Mission, Kitty Chiller; both instances would’ve been the first since they finished fourth with 17 gold medals in Athens twelve years ago.
Still, it was the country’s seventh consecutive top ten finish and it wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the heroics of some several unknowns such as Mack Horton, Kyle Chalmers and Chloe Esposito, among others.
After a dismal effort in the swimming pool in London, whereby only the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team topped the dais, the Australians fared slightly better this time, winning three gold medals.
This included the successful gold medal defence of the aforementioned relay team, led by the Campbell sisters, Brittany Elmslie and Emma McKeon, as well as the victories by Horton and Chalmers in the men’s 400m and 100m freestyle respectively.
There were also silver medals for Madeline Groves (women’s 200m butterfly), the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team, Mitch Larkin (men’s 200m backstroke) and the women’s 4x100m medley relay team, while the men’s 4x100m freestyle and medley relay teams, and McKeon (women’s 200m freestyle), took bronze.
But the biggest disappointments came from Cameron McEvoy and the Campbell sisters, who failed to medal in their pet events despite being heavily favoured.
McEvoy finished just 0.11 seconds short of a Bronze Medal in the 100m freestyle race won by Chalmers while after leading at the halfway point of the women’s 100m freestyle, Bronte and Cate finished fourth and sixth respectively.
The Campbell sisters blamed stage fright for their fadeout in the final 25 metres, with Cate saying that her swim was “possibly the greatest choke in Olympic history“.
Overall, the return of ten medals from the swimming pool was the same as it was in London four years ago, but this was a much better effort when you consider there were two more gold medals as well as a first individual male champion in any discipline since Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett in Athens in 2004.
Outside of the swimming pool, there were also gold medals for Catherine Skinner (shooting, women’s trap), the rugby sevens team, Kim Brennan (rowing), Tom Burton (sailing) and Chloe Esposito (modern pentathlon).
Esposito’s victory came after she was running seventh before the combined shooting/running stage of the event. It was then she took the lead before claiming the most unexpected gold medal of them all, even by her own standards.
Having been elevated to the gold medal in June after Sergey Kirdyapkin was stripped of his victory in London due to a doping violation, Jared Tallent came close to “defending” his title before being overtaken in the final stages by Matej Tóth.
And in her final Olympic Games, cyclist and Opening Ceremony flagbearer Anna Meares took the Bronze Medal in the women’s Kieren.
The victory by the women’s rugby sevens team was the only one by any Australian team in any sport, with the Boomers coming agonisingly close to winning its first medal of any kind when it was pipped by Spain in the Bronze Medal playoff.
In the basketball, both the Boomers and Opals had their medal hopes ended by Serbia, the men’s in the semi-finals by 26 points and the women’s by just two points in the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, after a disappointing start to their campaign, the Matildas did enough to qualify for the quarter-finals but were knocked out in heartbreaking circumstances when they lost to Brazil in a penalty shoot-out.
The water polo and hockey teams also all failed to qualify for the semi-finals, with the men’s water polo team failing to make it out of group play despite scoring a 12-7 win over Greece in their final pool match.
In the tennis, while he was not expected to do well given his lowly world ranking, 27-year-old John Millman made history by becoming the first man or woman in Olympic tennis history to win a match 6-0, 6-0, when he did so against Lithuania’s Ricardis Berankis in the first round before eventually losing to Kei Nishikori.
The best performance came from Samantha Stosur, who reached the third round before being outclassed by reigning Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber in straight sets.
Those are just some of the most notable events and medal victories to come out of what has been a rather disappointing display from a country which has prided itself on a rich Olympic history dating all the way back to 1896.
Apart from some athletes crumbling under the pressure of expectations, a major factor behind the poor showing could be the hard-line stance shown by Kitty Chiller, for whom this was her first Olympic Games as the country’s Chef de Mission.
Back in May, she was in the centre of a slanging match with tennis player Nick Kyrgios over the latter’s on-court behaviour, and it resulted in the 21-year-old withdrawing from the Games citing unfair treatment.
Chiller also made the decision to ban swimmers Emma McKeon and Josh Palmer from the closing ceremony following a breach of team protocol, but the former later had her ban lifted after it was successfully appealed.
As far as television broadcasting is concerned, Channel Seven marked its Olympics comeback by doing an excellent job in utilising its main channel, as well as two of its secondary channels (7TWO and 7mate), and its ‘Olympics on 7’ app, to broadcast the event to millions of Australians nationwide.
The fact that the majority of events took place during what is typically known as the ‘graveyard timeslot’ in television terms (Rio is 13 hours behind the Eastern Seaboard), meant most, if not all, of Australia would’ve been in bed when the major afternoon events were on in Rio.
But the fact that the next Olympics are in Tokyo, which is one hour behind the Eastern Seaboard, in 2020, means more Australian fans will get to enjoy the majority of events, in particular the swimming and athletics, in prime-time as they did when the Games were held in Beijing (two hours behind) eight years ago.
It could potentially be the last Olympics anchored by veteran broadcaster Bruce McAvaney, who will be 67 by the time the Opening Ceremony takes place on July 24, 2020.
And now, with the Games officially closed for another four years, attention and focus now turns to the Japanese capital where Australia will be hoping for a much better effort than the 29 medals they managed in Rio, their lowest tally in 24 years.
But before then, there is still the Paralympics to come next month, as well as the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in just 18 months’ time and then, to a lesser extent, the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in April 2018.
Locally, Australian sporting fans’ focus will now turn back to the football codes, especially with the finals just around the corner, and then the summer of cricket which starts in November and of course, the Melbourne Cup.
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