Australia have won their first rowing medal of the Paris Olympics, with Jessica Morrison and Annabelle McIntyre taking the bronze medal in the coxless pair after a late surge from Romania.
The Australian duo began strongly, moving ahead of the pack alongside a powerhouse crew from the Netherlands. But the Dutch pair soon established a significant lead in the gold medal position, leaving Australia in an awkward spot ahead of the field but well-behind the leading boat.
After holding second for almost the entirety of the 2,000m race, a fast finish from Romania pipped Australia to the line – leaving Morrison, 32, and McIntyre, 27, to claim bronze, in a time of 7:03.54.
The pair won gold in Tokyo as part of the coxless four, and both have a handful of world championship medals to their name. The bronze medal improves on their pair performance at the last Olympics, where they finished seventh.
Australia will have more medal opportunities at the Games regatta on Saturday.
On the first day of athletics at the Stade de France, Bree Masters progressed through her heat in the women’s 100m, running alongside American star Sha’Carri Richardson. She said a note from her roommate in the village, Torrie Lewis, helped her relax.
“[Lewis] was asleep this morning by the time that I left, so she left me a note and it said: ‘If I’m not awake in time, I wish you the best of luck. You’ve worked so hard to get in this individual 100 meters now go beat Sha’Carri.”
Masters didn’t beat Richardson, but her 11.26s was good enough for third place and a place in the semi-finals. Lewis – the national 100m record holder – chose not to run the event at Paris to concentrate on the 200m and 4x100m relay.
Meanwhile, high jumpers Eleanor Patterson and Nicola Olyslagers sailed through the qualification round, both laying a solid platform for a run at the podium in the final on Sunday. Olyslagers cleared all of her three attempts, the highest at 1.95m, while Patterson had a single miss at 1.92m before two subsequent makes.
The pair are poised to compete for a medal alongside Ukrainian world record-holder, Yaroslava Mahuchikh, who cleared 2.1m three weeks ago to beat the previous mark which had stood for 37 years.
Olyslagers said she is on good terms with the Ukrainian. “She’s one of my favourite people to jump with, aside from Eleanor, right?” she said. “She has such a professional mindset, but also we’re friends, when she jumps I high five her, when I jump [she high fives me] and it’s great competition to be friends with your competitors.”
Australia’s highly fancied men’s 1500m contingent were left disappointed as Oliver Hoare, Stewart McSweyn and Adam Spencer all failed to qualify for the semi-finals, and must now enter the repechage.
“It’s going to be one hell of a story if we can turn around from the repechage, so I’m going to be there tomorrow,” McSweyn said. “Any time I wear the Aussie guernsey I want to do it proud and I have family and friends here, so I want to put in a better performance.”
The Australian men’s basketball team qualified for the quarter-finals after being made to sweat on other results, following a 77-71 loss to Greece, who were led by Giannis Antetokounmpo in Lille. The Boomers had opened their group strongly with a win over Spain, before slumping to Canada on Tuesday. The Boomers progressed after Canada beat Spain in the other group A tie later on Friday.
Veterans Matt Ebden and John Peers outplayed American singles stars Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul to guarantee at least a men’s doubles silver for Australia in the tennis tournament.
The veteran pair’s all-court nous as doubles specialists at Roland-Garros saw them out-think and out-skill the higher-powered but less-harmonious US duo 7-5, 6-2 on Friday to earn themselves an unexpected shot at the gold medal match.
The two 36-year-olds will face another American pair, fourth seeds Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram, for the gold on Court Philippe Chatrier on Saturday.
Jason Day was left to rue an errant tee shot late in his second Olympic golf round, the only blemish as the Australian No 1 settled into his Paris campaign. Australia’s other male representative, Min Woo Lee, cast aside his disappointing opening five-over 76 with a rousing six-under 65, which was one of the rounds of the day.
The wasteful Kookaburras slipped off the front row of their Olympics hockey pool and face a nervous wait on their quarter-final opponents after suffering a frustrating 3-2 loss to India in Paris.
Australia are guaranteed a women’s water polo quarter-final berth after the Stingers stormed to the top of their Olympic group with a dominant 10-7 win over Canada.
Teremoana Junior battled valiantly against defending Olympic champion Bakhodir Jalolov in boxing’s super-heavyweight category, but was ultimately unable to end Jalolov’s six-year unbeaten streak, losing on points in a unanimous decision.
