Aussie sprint sensation Gout Gout will not compete at next month's under-20 world championships in Oregon after he confirmed on Instagram that he has a partial hamstring tear.

The 18-year-old sustained the injury at training in Brisbane on Wednesday night.

Gout won silver in the men’s 200m at the 2024 U20 Worlds and had prioritised this year’s championships in Oregon over the Commonwealth Games to chase junior world gold.

He says the focus is now on rehab and coming back in 2027 "better and stronger and faster".

2
The number of wildcard players who have ever reached the Wimbledon men's singles semi-finals. Great Britain’s Arthur Fery became the second on Wednesday, after the 23-year-old world number 114 defeated Italian ninth seed Flavio Cobolli in straight sets in Wednesday's quarter-final. The only other wildcard to have achieved the feat is Croatia’s Goran Ivanisevic, who won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in 2001 as the world's 125th-ranked player. Fery faces French Open champion Alexander Zverev in the semi-final on Friday. The other semi-final will be played between world number one Jannik Sinner and 24-time grand slam champion Novak Djokovic. 

"My thoughts are that it's terrible. I think it's very, very far from fair play for all the countries involved here, not just for Ukraine. I 100 per cent don't agree with this decision. … I just want to go out there and hopefully beat every single Russian I play in the Olympics."
Marta Kostyuk, Ukraine's world number 13 women’s tennis player, speaking to the media on Wednesday after reaching her first Wimbledon semi-final with a straight-sets win over Italian Jasmine Paolini. Kostyuk’s comments were in reference to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to provisionally lift its ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes this week, having suspended Russia in 2023 after it invaded Ukraine. Kostyuk told Reuters she would raise the issue with tennis authorities after the tournament.

Norwegian soccer player Tom Lund had aviophobia, a fear of flying. As a result, he never appeared for Norway in a match outside of Europe. The Norwegian national team allowed him to drive to away matches where possible, including qualifiers held in Hungary and Bulgaria. Lund died earlier this year, aged 75.

Two decades telling the stories that shape women's sport.

Ann Odong didn't just want to cover sport, she wanted to change who got covered. Armed with a Master of Communications (Sport Media) from Deakin, she founded The Women's Game, one of Australia's longest-running women's sport media platforms, before spending 7.5 years leading communications for the Matildas across World Cups and Olympics.

Today, Ann serves as Team Manager and Communications Manager for Afghan Women United, a groundbreaking global program supporting displaced Afghan women footballers around the world. The program uses football to create visibility and belonging for communities that are often overlooked.

Ann credits Deakin with sharpening how she thinks about sport, not just as performance, but as a vehicle for social change.

Inspired by Ann's story? A career where sport meets storytelling at the #1 provider for sport in Australia.

^{Transparency: This is a sponsored part of the newsletter - the best way to keep the newsletter free for you.}

🏉 The top two teams on the AFL ladder are set to square off tonight as the Fremantle Dockers host the Sydney Swans at Optus Stadium in Perth. The Dockers, on 14 wins and two losses, lead the Swans (13 wins and three losses) by four points at the top of the ladder. Fremantle will be looking to bounce back after losing their first game in more than three months last week, going down to Greater Western Sydney to end a club-record 14-match winning streak. Sydney came into the match with some momentum after a 35-point win over the Western Bulldogs on Saturday. The Swans have won the past four meetings.

🏉 Rugby league federations from Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga signed a partnership deal with the Australian Rugby League Commission in Brisbane on Wednesday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the leaders of the three Pacific nations at the signing. He said: "We bond around a shared love of this great game, a shared investment in our young people and their future and a shared commitment to the region we call home.” The Federal Government is backing the deal with $250 million over 10 years, part of a broader $600 million commitment to rugby league in the Pacific that includes the entry of the Papua New Guinea Chiefs into the NRL from 2028.

🚴 Dutch cyclist Olav Kooij took his first Tour de France stage win, holding off Germany's Max Kanter and Belgium's Tim Merlier in a sprint finish on Stage Five. Norway's Torstein Træen still holds the yellow leader’s jersey, 28 seconds ahead of American Sean Quinn. Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar, the race’s defending champion, sits fourth. He is seven minutes and 53 seconds behind Træen and level on time with Danish rival and two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard. Stage Six will see the riders head into the Pyrenees mountains with a summit finish at Gavarnie-Gèdre.

Worksite safety, redefined by Claude

Aussies are transforming safety for construction workers using AI. Presien, a physical AI company built for heavy industry, used Claude to develop an agentic platform that analyses worksites around the clock - surfacing risks before they become issues, cutting critical safety events by over 70% in three months.

Today marked the first day in 27 days with no World Cup games.

Fear not, the action continues tomorrow with eight teams and eight matches remaining before a victor can claim bragging rights as the world’s best. 

Here's what to know as the 2026 FIFA World Cup narrows to its final eight.

The eight remaining teams are France, Morocco, Spain, Belgium, Norway, England, Argentina, and Switzerland. The quarter-finals begin on Friday morning (AEST) with France taking on Morocco before Spain plays Belgium on Saturday morning.

On Sunday, Norway will play its first-ever World Cup quarter-final against England before defending champion Argentina meets Switzerland in the last of the four matches.

The Golden Boot is awarded to the player who scores the most goals at the tournament. The four players leading the race for this year’s award are all still in contention. 

Argentina's Lionel Messi leads with eight goals, France's Kylian Mbappé and Norway's Erling Haaland are one behind on seven, and England captain Harry Kane is next with six.

Justin Bieber has been added to the lineup for the first-ever World Cup final halftime show. The Canadian pop star joins previously announced acts Madonna, Shakira and the K-pop group BTS. 

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin will oversee the 11-minute production, staged during the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 20 July (AEST). FIFA has forecast the show will attract an audience of as many as "a couple of billion".

Enjoying the newsletter?

If you are, why not share the love with your friends? We’d love your help in getting the word out there.

Send them this link to sign up.

The New South Wales Blues have beaten the Queensland Maroons 30-12 in the third and final decider of the 2026 State of Origin series at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Wednesday night. The Blues take the series 2-1, reclaiming the Origin shield that they lost to the Maroons in 2025.

Blues halfback Nathan Cleary won both the player-of-the-match award and the Wally Lewis Medal for player of the series. Cleary, a four-time NRL premiership winner with the Penrith Panthers, scored the Blues’ first two tries and a total of 18 points to equal the points record for a series decider. 

He had previously faced criticism from parts of the media claiming that Cleary had never ‘dominated’ the State of Origin arena in the way he did in club football.

Wednesday night's win was only the fourth time in 14 attempts that the Blues have taken a series decider at Suncorp Stadium.

Combined with their 2024 victory at the same ground, it is also the first time NSW have won back-to-back Origin deciders in Brisbane.

The NRL has acknowledged that a controversial try in the 56th minute by NSW centre Bradman Best should not have stood. Best raced the length of the field to score after gathering a loose ball near NSW’s tryline and fending off a tackle attempt from Queensland fullback and Knights teammate Kalyn Ponga. 

Queensland players immediately queried the decision, arguing that a knock-on from Blues winger Jack Bostock during an earlier aerial contest with Maroons forward Jojo Fifita should have voided the play. On-field officials awarded the try, and the NRL’s Bunker upheld it after a review. 

However, in a post-match statement, an NRL spokesperson said that upon further review they found "the ball appeared to be touched" in the Bostock-Fifita contest.

NSW coach Laurie Daley used his post-match press conference to hit back at media coverage in the lead-up to the decider. 

Pointing to stories that had questioned his handling of team preparation, Daley said: "Some of the stuff that's been written, gee, come on. Hopefully those blokes might have a decent look at themselves.”

Daley is out of contract with the Blues at the end of this year and gave no indication whether he intends to seek an extension.