Australia moved back to second in the medal tally this morning after Australia's Women's Rugby 7's team (the Pearls) ended their undefeated campaign with a 24-17 win over New Zealand in the gold medal match. The Kiwis had the best of a tight first half, however some generous refereeing decisions and a try right on half time saw Australia take a 10-5 lead. However the second half was all Australia, with the Pearls racing to a 24-5 lead to put the gold to bed, with a couple of late New Zealand try's after the match was all over having no impact. The Pearls lit up the tournament and were a dominant force. They are deserved gold medallists. Having said that - Women's 7 has to be one of the more pathetic sports at the Games - there were two decent teams (they met in the final) and the rest of the field were complete garbage. As a result, there were only a handful of competitive matches and most games were complete blow outs.
Our swimmers reverted to their London stillnox form. World Champion Emily Seebohm continued her tradition of completely gassing it in major finals. Having led at the 50m mark she completely fell apart on the run home collapsing into 7th in an awful performance from lane 1. It turns out those who love together choke together as well. C-bomb's girlfriend Matt Larkin, also the world champion, also led at the 50m mark, completely f-ked up his turn and faded out of the medals. Both swimmers said they were happy with their performance - they need to take a serious spoonful of the cement. In two events were Australia was expecting gold - we failed to medal. It is truly stunning how many of our number 1 ranked swimmers go backwards when it matters most. I don't ever know or care who one the races. One positive was Sun Yang's return to form to take gold in the Men's 200m Freestyle in an epic race against South Africa's Chad Le Clos, setting up an epic clash with the Mack in the 1500m later in the week. It was a cold war battle in the Women's 100m breastroke - and it was a win for the good guys as the USA's Lillia King held off convicted Russian doper Yulia Efimova to take the gold.
News wasn't so good for the Hockeyroos who sunk to the bottom of the group stage table after going down to the USA 2-1. Having lost their opening game to Team GB they will now need everything to right to qualify for the quarters - a medal looks completely unattainable. In basketball the Boomers continued their great start to the campaign with a 95-80 win over Serbia - next up is Team USA (FYI in 4 matches so far the Yanks mens and womens team have won by a lazy 206 points combined)!
In one of the best sports of the games (in the Falcon's completely unbiased opinion), Chris Burton shot to the top of the 3-day eventing standings in the Equestrian with a clean round in the Cross Country. And what an eventful course it was with plenty of refusals and even a fall in the first hour alone!! He now leads Germany's Michael Jung by 3.3 points heading in to tonight's final show jumping round - where each knocked down fence will incur a 4 point penalty. As a result Australia also surged to the lead in the teams event - where they hold a 4 point lead over NZ. It could be a case of double gold for Australia at the equestrian tomorrow!!!!!
The horrific crashes in Rio also continued overnight with the Australian Women's pursuit team hitting the deck leaving Mel Hoskins to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance. This will be a bitter pill to swallow for a team that looked to be a huge chance of a medal, potentially even gold.
Social Media Call Of The Day
Falcon's housemate after hearing about the Dutch girl crashing out of the Women's road race while leading and breaking her spine:
So what you're saying is...she came last
Medal Tally
1- USA - 5-7-7
2 - China - 5-3-5
3 - Australia - 4-0-3
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