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Australia mightn’t love guns in a social sense, but in an Olympic sense they’re a-okay by me. Because on Day 2 of the Olympic Games Australia’s golden moment came in the women’s trap shooting.
Thanks to Catherine Skinner Australia continued on its merry way, now sitting on three gold medals and in third place behind the USA and China on the Olympic Games Medal Tally.
How good is that?
With no love from our swimmers, aside from bronze to our men’s 4x100m freestyle relay team, that lone gold certainly was the high point on what was otherwise a bit of a disappointing day.
Our highly-rated Kookaburras somehow went down to Spain, who were not rated as a medal chance in all the pre-tournament banter.
While it by no means spells the end of our men’s hockey team’s Olympic campaign, it makes things that much more difficult. Just like the women yesterday, Australia have now put themselves in a position where winning is a necessity. No rest for either of our hockey teams from here on then!
But our women’s sevens team continued to make mincemeat of their opponents, thrashing Spain (yep, Spain again) in their quarter-final after they drew with the USA in their final pool match. They’ll now play Canada in the semi-finals, and if they make it through that they’ll come up against either Great Britain or New Zealand in the gold medal match.
Also, Del Potro beat Djokovic. Just FYI…
They’re a huge chance for a gold medal.
The Opals also did a pretty good job of getting over Turkey – a good start to our women’s basketball campaign.
The pool and sevens presents Australia’s best chance for a medal, but if you’re a complete Olympic buff and want to know what event is on at what time I really do recommend our Olympic event schedule. We put a lot of time and effort into it, and people are reading it, which is great.
Mitch Larkin and Emily Seebohm, our world champion backstrokers, will both be racing in the men’s and women’s 100m backstroke finals, which presents a pretty good chance for a medal, and a very reasonable proposition of gold.
The big surprise for Australia was Madison Wilson, who pipped Seebohm to finish first in their semi. It should be a good race tomorrow, with Australia fielding two great medal chances.
Our Boomers are back on court tomorrow, as are our water polo side.
Somehow, we’ve been caught up discussing this very poorly-worded question: is Mack Horton a racist?
We all know that putting “a” in front of “racist” almost always means you’re racist, but in this case there’s simply no validity to comments about Mack and him being discriminatory to Chinese people.
He was certainly being confrontational to China’s Sun Yang, but I can’t imagine it was Yang’s race that made him so – moreso the positive test that saw him banned for three months two years ago.
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, and by his silver medal showing yesterday, and his performance in the 200m freestyle semi-finals today it’s clear that Yang is still in the elite class.
But Mack Horton, the bloke who beat him then smack-talked him afterwards, has copped a torrent of social media messages from fans, asking him to apologise for his comments about Yang.
And it’s not just Mack. Any writer talking about Mack will also cop endless abuse on Twitter. So I’m assuming I’ll be put on that long and not-so-distinguished list with this article.
Maybe he should apologise. But then again, he wasn’t saying anything that was factually incorrect. The rivalry between the two of them was simmering away. By all reports Yang struck first in the training pool, and Horton struck a triple blow with smack talk before the 400m final, winning the 400m final and then more smack after the race.
Someone needs to get those two in a room, get them to work out their differences and then film them shaking hands, because to continue a spat in this manner would just be undignified. Fans need to get a grip on both sides.
Horton isn’t racist. Yang is racing clean. Let’s get on with it shall we?
Roarers, I can’t watch everything. What were your highlights from Day 2 of the Olympics?