Welcome to Day 8 in Paris!

There was just something about Day 7 that gave us extra feels than usual.

From Kaylee McKeown giving her gold medal to her coach, Cameron McEvoy finally getting an elusive gold at Olympics number four, Patty Mills’ Boomers sneaking through to the basketball quarter-finals, or the return of the beaming high jumper, Nicola Olyslagers, it was a touching night of sport.

But it was the Sakakibara siblings who delivered potentially the story of the Olympics so far. We’ve got all the details a little further down. A warning: the story might give you “hayfever”.

Paris ‘24: Medal tally

Paris ‘24: Tonight’s top moments

Saturday 3 August (All times in AEST)

⛳ 5:00pm, Men's Golf: Individual Stroke Play (Round 3)
The Australians continue to lag behind the course leaders, with Jason Day sitting in equal 13th and Min Woo Lee back in equal 35th.

🔫 5:00pm, Shooting - Men's & Women's Skeet Qualification
Australians Joshua Bell and Aislin Jones will compete in the Skeet qualification rounds. Skeet shooting is when participants shoot clay targets that are flung into the air.

🚣 5:30pm, Women’s Rowing: Single Sculls Final (Medal Events 🥇)
Tara Rigney will race for a medal in this six-way medal race, with World Record holder Angelova Desislava of Bulgaria and Olympic Record holder Emma Twigg of NZ both in the mix.

🏐 6:00pm, Men's Beach Volleyball - Australia v France (Group Game)
Thomas Hodges and Zachery Schubert will be looking for their first win of the Games after successive losses to Poland and Germany. It’ll be hard for them to progress past the Group stage without a loss here. 

🚣 6:50pm, Women’s Rowing: Eight Final (Medal Event 🥇)
Australia will line up in the medal race against a tough field, including world-best Romania. This is shaping up to be a golden session of rowing for the Aussie women.

🏊 7:00pm, Swimming Heats
With only a few days of swimming left, there’s plenty of action left in the pool. Australians Sam Short (1500m Freestyle), Shayna Jack & Meg Harris (50m Freestyle), and Men's & Women's 4x100m Medley Relay teams all compete in heats here, with the finals later in the day.

🚴 7:00pm, Cycling - Men's Road Race (Medal Event 🥇)
Australians Michael Matthews, Ben O’Connor, and Simon Clarke will compete in the gruelling 273km race. Keep an eye on the outstanding French scenery as riders travel through the outskirts of Paris, culminating in the big finish near the Eiffel Tower.

🚣 7:10pm, Men’s Rowing: Eight Final (Medal Event 🥇)
Another potential moment of rowing greatness, with the six-team final featuring Australia, World Record holders Germany, in-form Netherlands and powerhouses Romania.

🎾 8:00pm, Men’s Tennis: Doubles Final (Medal Event 🥇)
After defeating U.S. pair Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul last night, Matthew Ebden and John Peers will be looking to win one more match to secure Australia’s first gold medal in tennis at the Olympics since Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde won the same event in 1996.

⛵ 8:33pm, Men’s Windsurfing: Final (Medal Event 🥇)
Australian windsurfer Grae Morris is guaranteed a medal in the men's Windsurfing event, and will enter the grand final medal race in top position on the leaderboard after a series of 14 races so far. The final race will have only three competitors to determine the medal order. Morris will become the first Australian medal in Windsurfing since the 1992 Olympics. 

🏑 8:45pm, Women's Hockey - Australia v Spain (Group Game)
Australia sits on top of Pool B, and another win here against Spain (currently third out of six teams in the group) would likely cement top spot. 

🤽 11:00pm, Men's Water Polo - Australia v Hungary (Group Game)
This team is on fire - they’ve beaten both Serbia and France so far. Tonight, they take on Hungary, a team traditionally a force in water polo. Australia currently sit in second spot in Group B. 

🛶 11:30pm, Canoe Slalom - Women's & Men's Kayak Cross (Round 1)
Jess Fox qualified second-fastest, while her sister, Noemie, qualified eighth (there are 37 qualifiers altogether). After the women’s races, Australians Tim Anderson (qualified 20th) and Tristan Carter (qualified 22nd) will start their medal pursuit.

🥊 11:30pm, Men’s Boxing - 57kg division Quarter-final
Australian boxer Charlie Senior will face Phillipino Carlo Paalam in the Quarter-Final.

Sunday 4 August (All times in AEST)

🏀 1:15am, Men's Basketball - USA v Puerto Rico
The team of NBA superstars is back in action, with the U.S. looking for three straight wins. They should breeze past Puerto Rico, which has yet to win a game. 

🏀 2:30am, Women's Basketball 3x3 - Australia v France (Group Game)
Australia’s last group game will be critical to see if they can sneak into the top two (they’re currently third) and progress straight to the Semi-Finals or if they’ll have to settle for the Play-in game series to compete against three other teams for 3rd and 4th spot. 

🏄‍♂️ 3:00am, Men’s Surfing Semi-Finals
Australian surfer Jack Robinson will face Brazilian superstar and three-time World Champion Gabriel Medina in the Final at 6:00 a.m (AEST). 

🏃 3:50am, Athletics: 100m Semi-Final 
In the heats, Aussie Bree Masters ran an 11.26, her fastest time since 2024. She’ll likely need to go as close to 11 seconds as possible to make the final, which will be at 5:20 a.m. (AEST). Whatever the result, she will become the first Australian woman since 2000 to qualify for the semi-finals in this race.

Then, it’s time for swimming…

🏊 4:30am: Men’s 100m Butterfly Final (Medal Event 🥇)
Matthew Temple snuck into the final in lane one, and is an outside chance for a spot on the podium. 

🏊 5:08am: Women’s 200m Individual Medley Final (Medal Event 🥇)
Two Australians in this final: Kaylee McKeown and Ella Ramsay. McKeown now has four individual medals across Tokyo and Paris. She’s in lane one for this event, which is a new addition to her program. Summer McIntosh is the favourite to win, but anything can happen in swimming finals. 

 🏊 5:28am: Women’s 800m Freestyle Final (Medal Event 🥇)
A huge race - Australians Ariarne Titmus and Lani Pallister will be in lanes 3 and 6, with the lethal American pair of Katie Ledecky and Paige Madden between them in lanes 4 and 5. Can Titmus add another gold to the medal cabinet?

🏊  5:58am: Mixed 4x100m Medley Relay Final (Medal Event 🥇)
Iona Anderson, Zac Stubblety-Cook, Emma McKeon and Kyle Chalmers won their heat, and recorded a time one second slower than the Americans. All eyes will be on the centre two lanes here.

Paris ‘24: The headlines

In case you missed it…

🏊‍♀️ Kaylee McKeown and Cameron McEvoy have added two more gold medals to Australia’s tally, bringing the number of gold medals to 11 including 7 from the pool. McKeown set a new Olympic record in the 200m backstroke, successfully completing the ‘double-double’ - winning both the 100m and 200m individual races in two consecutive Olympic Games. It also means she becomes the first Australian to win four individual gold medals in history. 

Meanwhile, McEvoy won the 50m freestyle final, Australia’s first-ever medal in the event. He is competing in his fourth Olympics (Australia’s first male swimmer to do so), and this is his first gold.

🎾 Australian tennis doubles pairing Matthew Ebden and John Peers will go home with either a gold or silver medal after making the finals of the doubles competition, beating highly-ranked U.S. duo Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul in straight sets. They’ll now face another U.S. duo, Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram. Ebden and Peers have won all their games in Paris in straight sets, as have Krajicek and Ram, who beat Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals. The two Australian veterans are likely competing in their last games, at both 36.

🤽‍♀️ The Australian Women’s Water Polo team, The Stingers, remain undefeated in Paris after beating Canada 10-7. It means they are on top of Group A, with one game remaining, and will progress to the quarter-finals. The Stingers won gold in 2000, and two bronze medals in 2008 and 2012. They now play Hungary at 10pm on Sunday night (AEST). 

🏀 Australia’s men’s basketball team, The Boomers, have progressed to the Quarter-Finals despite going down to Greece 77-71 overnight. NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo starred for Greece, who led almost all game. The loss meant that Australia needed Canada to beat Spain to go through - Canada did so by only three points to secure Australia’s spot over Spain. The Boomers will find out who they play after the other group matches are completed overnight. 

🏑 Australia’s men’s hockey team, the Kookaburras, lost 3-2 to India, but have still done enough in the four other Group Stage matches to progress to the Quarter-Finals, where they will face number-three ranked Netherlands at 1:30am on Sunday (AEST). It was India’s first win in men’s hockey against Australia in 52 years. 

🇸🇰 Slovakian swimmer Tamara Potocka was hospitalised after collapsing just after swimming in the heats of the women’s 200m Individual Medley. The 21-year-old was treated pool-side and carried off on a stretcher whilst giving her oxygen. Slovakia’s team leader, Ivana Lange, said in a statement that Potocka “has asthma…this whole combination of nervous and physical tension while she did not have her inhaler immediately available to use contributed to the creation of this problem”. The Slovakia team later said she had been released from medical care and was recovering in her room at the Olympic Village.

🇸🇰 Cape Verde, a tiny nation of about 600,000 people spread across ten islands west of Africa, is set to win their first Olympic medal in what is their eighth Games. David De Pina, a boxer in the men’s 51kg division, won his quarter-final and will progress to the semi-final against the 2016 Rio gold medallist, Hasanboy Dusmatov. That bout is at 12:50am on Monday morning (AEST).

Paris ‘24: What we’re talking about

The siblings that are inspiring Australia

When writing about sport, journalists often use words like ‘resilience’ or ‘determination’. Sometimes, those words can feel overused. Not in this case.

Few have demonstrated the resilience or determination that Olympic gold medalist Saya Sakakibara (and her brother, Kai, who was formerly a BMX athlete himself) have in the past few years. Sakakibara’s epic journey to Paris culminated in her winning gold overnight in the Women’s BMX racing, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing. 

Kai Sakakibara

In 2020, Saya’s brother Kai had a BMX accident in Bathurst that nearly killed him. He was in a coma for 2 months and remained in hospital for 8 months with a Traumatic Brain Injury. Kai is now working towards qualifying for the 2028 Paralympics in rowing. Speaking after her win, Saya said: "My family is here [and after] everything that I've been through the last three years. This is what got me going.”

Tokyo

Not long after Kai’s life-altering crash, Saya had an accident in the semi-finals of the Tokyo Olympics, where she was taken from the track on a stretcher with a concussion. But that wasn’t going to stop a determined Saya, who said "I really wanted that fairy tale ending at Tokyo and when I didn't get it, it was definitely heartbreaking, and it took some time to recover from that…But I think it was the experiences that I needed to take and have in order to come back for my second Olympics in Paris and win this gold."

The race

And what a winner she was on Friday in Paris, taking home gold in 34.231 seconds. The medal ceremony didn’t leave a dry eye in sight, and the embrace between Saya and Kai was something to behold. Determination, resilience, sporting excellence - it was all there.

Help us grow!

Enjoying the newsletter?

This sport newsletter is a new addition to TDA’s content offering, and we need your help getting the word out there.

If you want your friends to get their sport news from us, send them this:
https://sport.thedailyaus.com.au/?utm_campaign=sport-newsletter&utm_source=referral&utm_medium=email

Anything but Paris ‘24

AFL

The Western Bulldogs beat the Melbourne Demons 110-59 last night, making it unlikely the Demons will make the finals. Marcus Bontempelli starred for the Bulldogs in the 51-point win, with 33 disposals, two goals, and a hand in 16 scoring plays. Meanwhile, the West Coast Eagles were 10-point winners over the Gold Coast Suns in Perth, ending a nine-game losing streak and likely ending the Suns’ hope of playing in the finals. The Suns are yet to win a game away from home in 2024.

NRL

The NZ Warriors lost to the Parramatta Eels, who won their first match in six games. The Warriors sit in 12th spot, and needed to win at home against the Eels to strengthen their finals hopes before a tough run of matches against some of the top teams. In the second game, the Sydney Rooster beat The Dolphins 40-34 in Perth, with halfback Sam Walker contributing 24 of the 40 points. The Roosters now sit in third spot on the ladder, whilst the Dolphins remain in eighth but are in danger of slipping out of finals contention.  

NRLW

The Newcastle Knights have beaten the Canberra Raiders by six points in Canberra, with a late penalty try awarded to Tamika Upton proving to be the difference between the two sides. Last year’s Champions were behind with 20 minutes to go before two quick tries secured a victory. In the other match, the Gold Coast Titans were too strong for the Wests Tigers, with Titans centre Jaime Chapman scoring three of her team’s five tries. The Tigers remained scoreless in the second half despite a strong start.

A message from our sponsor

Boosting Athletic Performance with AI: Insights from Deakin’s Dr. Lyndell Bruce

Dr. Lyndell Bruce, a Sport Scientist at Deakin University, is all about using the latest tech and data to boost athletic performance.

Take Artificial Intelligence, for instance. Last year, Mitch Aarons, a School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences PhD student, designed and created a decision support system (DSS) for coaches to use to assist in their match-day decision-making.

The system compares data from historic match outcomes and in-game team metrics with the current performance characteristics of two teams during a match to provide real-time feedback on a team's chances of winning and how their chances might be improved

Dr. Bruce shares that one of the most exciting aspects of this system is how it combines the strengths of AI with the insights of a coach or analyst, enhancing team performance.

So, where is the biggest opportunity in sports tech right now? Dr. Bruce believes it's in harnessing data and ensuring processes and systems are set up to distil it into meaningful and useful information. With performance departments across all sports using various formats and sources, there's a huge opportunity for a user-friendly data management system.

Think beyond the field. Study sport at Deakin.

TDA asks