Good evening!

A shout-out to Jamaican sprint legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who concluded her program at her fifth and final Olympics. 

It was not the fairytale ending the star had in mind - Fraser-Pryce withdrew from the 100m semi-final last week due to injury and had hoped to compete in the Jamaican 4x100m women’s relay, held overnight. Unfortunately, she didn’t participate.

This means the 37-year-old has quietly ended her Olympic career with eight medals, including three golds, and will go down as one of the best female sprinters of all time. Fraser-Pryce said on Instagram today, “The support of my fans, my country, and the larger community has rooted me in immense gratitude that has sustained me throughout my career.”

Paris ‘24: Medal tally

Paris ‘24: Tonight’s top moments

Saturday 10th August (All times are in AEST)

⛳ 5:00pm: Women’s Golf (Final Round 🥇)
Australians Hannah Green (equal 11th) and Minjee Lee (equal 21st) are in action. 

🏊‍♀️ 6:00pm: Diving, Men’s 10m platform (Semi-Final 🥇)
Australian Cassiel Rousseau is the current world champion and a strong shot at an Olympic medal here - and Australian Jaxon Bowshire is also in the mix. The top 12 in the semi-final go through to the final.

🧗‍♀️6:15pm: Sport Climbing, Women’s Combined (Final 🥇)
Oceana Mackenzie will be in the hunt for a medal here. Competitors here will have six minutes to climb the 15m wall. 

🛶 6:30pm: Canoe Sprint, Women’s K1 500m and Men’s K1 1000m (Semi-Finals 🥇)
Alyce Wood races her K1 500m semi-final at 6:30pm (Semi-Final 1) for a spot in the A final at 9:00pm. Then, Tom Green races his K1 1000m semi-final at 7:10pm for an A final at 9:20pm.

🤼‍♂️ 7:30pm: Men’s Wrestling, 65kg Freestyle (Quarter-Final)
Keep an eye on Australian Georgii Okorokov, who will take on Puerto Rican Sebastian Rivera for a spot in the Semi-Final. 

🏐 11:35pm: Women’s Water Polo, Australia v Spain (Gold Medal Match 🥇)
This is simply unmissable. The Stingers will attempt to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors of Sydney 2000, who are the only Australian water polo team to have won gold at the Games. Australia have shown amazing form and resilience to make it this far and have every chance of upsetting Spain, who are unbeaten in the Games so far.

 Sunday 11th August

🏋️‍♀️12:00am: Weightlifting, Women’s 81kg (Final 🥇)
Eileen Cikamatana is competing in this event for Australia.

🎶12:00am: Breaking, B-Boys (Group B)
Jeff Dunne (competing as ‘J ATTACK’) will go through three rounds representing Australia in the group stage of the B-Boys Breaking. After the group stage, the bronze-medal battle will take place at 5:19am with the gold-medal battle to follow at 5:29am.

⚽ 1:00am: Women’s Football, United States v Brazil (Gold Medal Match 🥇)
Can the U.S women’s football team reclaim the title of Olympic champions?

🚴‍♂️ 1:00am: Track Cycling, Women’s Sprint (Heats)
Australian Kristina Clonan (Heat 2) will look to beat UK rider Emma Finucane to secure a spot in the Quarter-Finals. 

🚴‍♂️ 1:19am, Track Cycling, Men’s Keirin (Heats)
You’ll see an official bike set the pace in this event, and the race kicks off when it exits the track (kind of like a pace car in F1). Look out for Matthew Glaetzer in Heat 1, and Matthew Richardson fresh from his silver medal performance in the Sprint in Heat 3. The riders will be pushing for a spot in the Quarter-Finals. 

🚴‍♂️ 1:59am: Track Cycling, Men’s Madison (Final 🥇)
The Madison is a two-person relay event, with only one rider in the race at a time.Australia will be represented by Sam Welsford and Kelland O’Brien. 

🏃‍♂️3:00am: Men’s High Jump (Final 🥇)
Unfortunately, Brandon Starc didn’t qualify for this one. Regardless, the men’s high jump final always delivers drama and athleticism. The world record (2.45m) hasn’t been broken since 1993. 

🏃‍♂️3:15am: Men’s 800m (Final 🥇)
Kenyan running legend David Rudisha has held the world record in this race since the 2012 London Games.

🏃‍♂️3:30am: Women’s Javelin Throw (Final 🥇)
Australia is the only country to have two competitors in this final - Kathryn Mitchell and Mackenzie Little will push for a medal here. Keep an eye on Little - she won bronze at last year’s World Championships. 

🏃‍♂️3:35am: Women’s 100m Hurdles (Final 🥇)
It’s USA v The World - three U.S. runners will line up in lanes 4, 5 and 6 and look to do a full medal sweep. Puerto Rican Olympic Record holder Jasmine Camacho-Quinn is in lane 7.

🏐 3:35am: Men’s Water Polo, Australia v Italy (7-8 Placing Match)
Australia’s men’s water polo team will be looking to end their tournament on the right note as they face Italy in their final game. 

🏃‍♂️3:50am: Men’s 5000m (Final 🥇)
Norwegian track star Jakob Ingebrigtsen was disappointed in his 1500m performance, and is looking for redemption in this Final. Australia has one competitor in the field of 22 - 19th-ranked Stewart McSweyn. 

🏃‍♂️4:15am: Women’s 1500m (Final 🥇)
Jess Hull looked comfortable in her heat and has shown form in recent events,  proving she can win a medal in this event. It will be one of Australia’s best medal chances of the day. 

🏃‍♂️5:00am: Men’s 4x400m relay (Final 🥇)
There’s nothing quite like a relay, whether it’s in the pool or on the track. The 4x400m is one of the most prized races in athletics, and the U.S. will be looking to continue their dominance in the men’s discipline, perhaps even beating their 1993 World Record.  

🏃‍♂️5:14am: Women’s 4x400m relay (Final 🥇)
Then it’s the women’s turn - the U.S. are again medal favourites here but will have to overcome a strong field led by the Jamaicans, British, and French. 

🏀 5:30am: Men’s Basketball, United States v France (Gold Medal Game)
Can the U.S. ‘Dreamteam’ take home gold? Team USA and France meet in the Olympic gold medal match for the second consecutive time, and France will be seeking redemption on home soil. Unmissable basketball with the world’s best on the court.

Paris ‘24: The headlines

In case you missed it…

🚴‍♂️ Australian cyclist Matthew Richardson won silver in a highly-anticipated final of the Men’s Sprint event, with reigning Dutch Olympic Champion Harrie Lavreysen pipping Richardson in the final seconds of the race by 0.047 seconds. It means Richardson has now won two medals in Paris after being part of Australia’s bronze-medal men’s team sprint team. Earlier in the week, Richardson broke the world record in this event, but held onto that title for only a few minutes until Lavreysen broke it again a few minutes later. Richardson has one more chance to win a medal in tonight’s Keirin event.

🏊 Maddison Keeney added another silver to Australia’s medal tally, marking Australia’s first podium finish ever in either the men’s or women’s 3m springboard. Keeney was one half of the 3m synchronised diving team that just missed out on a medal because of an error in their final dive last week. Keeney was joined in the medal list by two Chinese divers - Chen Yiwen (gold) and Chang Yani (bronze).

🛶 Australia’s kayak double duo of Tom Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen won bronze in the men’s 500m sprint, adding to the gold medal they won in the 1000m race in Tokyo (there is no 1000m event in the Paris Games, with it being replaced by this 500m version). Had the duo raced the time they recorded in the semi-final of 1.26.85, they would have won the gold medal - but they ultimately came third in a three-way photo finish. The pair said they were still thrilled with what they had coined the “dirty gold” in bronze. 

🥊 Algeria’s Imane Khelif won the gold medal in the women’s 66kg boxing competition, winning in a unanimous points decision after the bout ran its full duration. Khelif’s participation in the competition has been a major talking point in the Games after her Italian opponent in the heats withdrew from the match and alleged her opponent to not meet participation criteria - a claim the IOC has strongly refuted. The 25-year-old became Algeria’s first gold medallist in 12 years across any sport, and told media after the win: “I am fully qualified to take part in this competition. I am a woman like any other woman. I was born a woman, I lived a woman, I competed as a woman. There’s no doubt about that. There are enemies of success – this is what I call them. That also gives my success a special taste because of these attacks.”

🪩 The world’s first breaking medal has been won by Japan’s Ami Yuasa, who beat 17-year-old Lithuanian Dominika Banevičin in the final dance-off. The event was officially opened by U.S. rapper Snoop Dogg. Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, who holds a PhD in the sport, did not win a round across her three battles, but has gained a passionate online following after including a ‘Kangaroo Hop’ in her routine. 

🏃 The highly-anticipated men’s 4x100m sprint has ended in drama, with the race-favourites U.S. team eventually disqualified because of an illegal baton handover between the first and second leg. The U.S. team, competing without Noah Lyles who withdrew from the race with COVID, crossed the line in seventh spot after failing to recover from the botched handover. After the event, officials ruled that the runners had completed the baton exchange outside the handover zone, leading to their disqualification. The race was won by Canada, with South Africa in second and Great Britain in third. 

Paris ‘24: What we’re talking about (part 1)

Can the U.S. Dream Teams do the basketball double?

As we reach the pointy end of the Olympics, one of the highlights of the program will be the basketball finals. It’s easy to remember who’s playing in the men’s and women’s competitions - the U.S. and France will face off in both. Here’s a quick guide to what you need to know, and how Australia ended their basketball programs. 

The Women’s Competition - Semi-Finals 

Australia’s Women’s Basketball team, the Opals, went down to the U.S. in their semi-final, with a final score of 85-64. It extends the winning streak of the U.S. women’s team, who now have not lost a game at the Olympics since the semi-finals of the Barcelona Games in 1992 - that’s 60 games. 

Meanwhile, in the other semi-final, France narrowly beat Belgium 81-75 in overtime. 

The U.S. side is arguably the team to beat in both the men’s and women’s basketball competitions.

What’s next

The Opals will now face Belgium in the bronze-medal match at 7:30pm tomorrow night (AEST), while the U.S. play France in the game directly after that. If the U.S. wins, it will be their eighth consecutive gold medal and they are the heavy favourites to beat the host side. Their three best players have been Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young - but France’s Gabby Williams, Valeriane Ayayi and Iliana Rupert have overcome every barrier put in their way. The home crowd will also play an important - and deafening - role. 

Australia will be hoping to beat Belgium in what will be team veteran Lauren Jackson’s last Olympics appearance for her country. 

The Men’s Competition - Semi-Finals

If you measured a team by star power, the U.S. men’s basketball team would be the clear winner across any sport at the Games. There’s too many high-profile names to rattle off - LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Jayson Tatum and Kevin Durant are just a few of what Americans call the ‘Dream team’.

The team beat Serbia, the team who knocked the Boomers out of the tournament, by a narrow four points, with an unbelievable 36-point performance from Steph Curry helping his team avoid a shock loss. Speaking after the game on the fact that his team was down at the end of the third quarter, Curry said: “I’ve seen a lot of Team USA basketball, and that was a special one”. Since 1992, the U.S. has only not won the gold medal on one occasion (Athens in 2004). 

In the other semi-final, France beat Germany by the same four-point margin in front of a raucous home crowd. France had already faced Germany once this tournament, and lost - but come the knockout semi-final, the home team held on to an unlikely victory. 

What’s next

France and Team USA have faced each other eight times in international basketball, with the U.S. winning seven times. This is the same matchup as the final in Tokyo, with the U.S. winning its fourth straight gold. The match will start at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow morning (AEST). Serbia and Germany play their bronze medal match at 7 p.m. tonight (AEST).

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Anything but Paris ‘24

🏉 NRL
The Penrith Panthers were two-point winners over the Parramatta Eels, with the Panthers scoring 14 points in the last six minutes to come from behind. Halfback Nathan Cleary had influence in all three final-stage tries to help his team to their 15th win of the season. The Panthers now sit second on the NRL ladder behind the Storm. In the other game, the Sharks smashed the Titans 44-0 as the Cronulla side pushed for a top-four finish.

🏉 AFL
The Sydney Swans pulled off a miraculous 27-point final-quarter comeback at the SCG to beat the Collingwood Magpies by three points, with the top-of-the-ladder Sydney side recording only their second win in the last six games after a mid-season shift in form. Sydney kicked the last five goals of the game in front of nearly 38,000 fans to steal the win, with star player Errol Gulden kicking the winning goal. Collingwood is now all but out of finals contention, a year after winning the premiership.

A message from our sponsor

Paris is the most gender equitable Games yet – but what exactly does that mean?

It’s been a big year in women’s sport - from the success of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, to the Paris Games which will mark the first time that female athletes represent half of the total competing athletes.

Dr. Kasey Symons, a Communications Lecturer (Sport Media) at Deakin University, says that while it’s important to recognise the athletes that have broken down barriers to get to where they are, women still have a “really difficult time” getting into certain spaces, including coaching, leadership, media and more.

“We don't think about the broader systems that are in place that have restricted participation,” she says, noting that equitable media coverage is still a major issue, with only 15% of total coverage dedicated to female athletes.

Dr. Symons also says fans can drive change by watching female athletes, following them on social media, and supporting women and nonbinary journalists covering the Games.

Think beyond the field. Study sport at Deakin.

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