OH MY!!!!!!!! Have you ever seen anything like it!?!?! Kyle Chalmers ended a 50 year drought for Australia in the Men's 100m Freestyle taking Gold with one of the best Olympic swims ever seen. The boy with a finish faster than Bernborough was only 7th after the first lap, before storming over the top of his rivals in the last 25m to snatch Gold from Belgium's Pieter Timmers and the USA's Nathan Adrian. It was an amazing win and one of the best Australian gold's The Falcon can remember - perhaps since Ian Thorpe mowed down Gary Hall Jr in Sydney. The gold helped us maintain our 4th position in the medal tally.
In what was a good night in the pool for Australia, we were unlucky not to make it two gold as Maddi Groves was beaten by just 3/100ths of a second in the Women's 200m butterfly having gone in as the fastest qualifier (classic Straya). Luckily the Falcon had a little something on Belmonte Garica (Spain) who took the Gold at the juicy price of $3. The Womne's 4 x 200m Freestyle relay team also put in a huge performance to take silver behind the dominant American team. The Campbell sisters both qualified for tomorrow nights Women's 100m freestyle final with Cate looking much more promising than Bronte. The concern was the performance of 16yo Canadian Penny Oleksiak who smashed her PB by over half a second to almost touch out Cate in the semi final. Still Cate is an unbackable favourite for gold. Taylor McKeown was, perhaps surprisingly, also the fastest qualifier through to tomorrow nights Women's 200m Breastroke final. Backstroke 'King' Mitch Larkin continued to do his best to abdicate, after being beaten into second in his semi final in the 200m. There must be huge doubts as to whether he can take gold in the final tomorrow night. I certainly wouldn't be backing him. He has massively underperformed at these games. Speaking of underperforming, how about Cam 'Not sure if James Magnussen' McEvoy who dogged it in the Mens 100m final and could only finish 7th behind the amazing Chalmers. Let's not forget McEvoy had the fast time in about 7 years heading into the event and pulled out of the Mens 4x200 freestyle relay to focus on tonight. Terrible.
Elsewhere, it was a day of 5ths for Australia on Day 5 with our trap shooter James Willett also finishing 5th despite shooting an Olympic record in the qualifying round. The Men's Rugby 7 team is out of medal contention. They managed to lose to South Africa in the Quarter Finals having previously beaten them just that morning in the pool round (#chokefest2016!). The Hockeyroos finally found their offence in the hockey smashing India 6-1 to move up to 3rd in Pool B (the top 4 from each pool qualify for the quarters). The Kookaburra's also got back on track with a 2-1 win against Great Britain in a game they absolutely dominated (in the end it took a last minute goal line save just to maintain the win!).
Outside of Australia the highlight of the day had to be Fabian Cancellara's (Switzerland) Gold in the Men's Time Trial on the bike. The Swiss is a legend of the sport, who was tragically denied a gold in the road race in London when crashing out inside the final 10 km. This time around there was no such disappointment as Spartacus crushed the field by almost 45 seconds. There was disappointment for Australia, with Rohan Dennis leading for much of the trial before a mechanical failure forced him to change bikes costing valuable time. Given he finished just 8 seconds from the Dark Side's Chris Froome (GB) for the Bronze it looks like another medal that Australia has coughed up.
On a final note, while some people will think the highlight of the day will be the Boomers pushing the US all the way in the Men's basketball - the fact is they lost, basketball shouldn't be in the Olympics and I couldn't GAF. Deal with it.
Social Media Call Of The Day
We would have won against Team USA if we didn't have to burn so much energy assembling shower curtains.
**** you Kitty Chiller.
Medal Tally
1 - USA - 10-11-10
2 - China - 10-5-8
3 - Japan - 6-1-11
4 - Australia - 5- 2 - 5
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