And good wins!!! It was all about the track on Day 9 of the games. And the highlight, in what is likely to be the highlight of the entire games, was Usain Bolt making Olympic history - becoming the first male track athlete to win the same event at three consecutive Olympic games in taking the blue ribbon event of any Olympics - the Men's 100m. Bolt looked to be struggling at halfway after a tardy start, but he soon clicked in to gear and mowed down two-time convicted doper Justin Gatlin (USA) in the back half of the race to win comfortably in 9.81. He looks almost certain to go on and do the 100/200 double for the third straight Olympics.
In an even more stunning result, South Africa's Wayde Van Nierkek broke one of the long standing world records of the track in taking the gold in the Men's 400m. He improved his PB by half a second running a stunning 43.03 to win the race by absolute panels, and take Michael Johnson's iconic record in the process.
Australia continued to be the masters of mediocrity. The highlight was our world champion and hot pre-Games favourites for gold in the Men's hockey - the Kookaburras. They lost 4-0 to the Dutch in the quarters :). These guys are the ultimate factory of sadness - having been expected to win Gold at basically every games since Barcelona, they've only managed it once - in Athens. They are then grand daddies of them all when it comes to choking - good riddance you hacks. To be fair - it wasn't as big a choke as the Kiwi's - who were up 2-0 against the Germans with 5 minutes to go and managed to LOSE 3-2 in normal time!!!! Fair effort that! Our Men's Water Polo team is also out.
We were average at the velodrome as well - Matthew Glaetzer lost the bronze medal in the Men's sprint. At the golf - Marcus Fraser, who had been in the gold medal position after the first two rounds and the bronze after round 3 - also dogged it - collapsing on the last day to fall from 3rd to 45th - L O fkn L. It feels like we are the stage where the only golds we are going to get any more are from the sailing.
Social Media Call of The Day
After South Africa Wayde van Niekerk took the gold and broke Michael Johnston's 400m WR:
As long as he doesn't shoot his partner he's set for life
Medal Tally
1 - US - 26-21-22
2 - GB - 15-16-7
3 - China - 15-13-17
9 - Australia 6-7-9
Further Reading
Thanks to The Alchemist for pointing out 538s excellent article on the world record performance of Almaz Ayana in the Women's 10,000 over the weekend. Worth a read - http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-almaz-ayana-break-the-world-record-by-too-much/
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