Artistic Swimming

Australia's artistic swimming team delivered a captivating performance inspired by "Avatar: The Way of Water," earning ninth place in the free routine at their event.

Their routine, filled with powerful lifts and fluid movements, highlighted their creativity and connection to the theme. The team scored 280.5521 points, for an overall standing of 516.45922 points.

They aim to improve their ranking in the upcoming acrobatic routine, with high hopes for a strong finish, 8 August at 3:30am AEST.

Athletics 

Jessica Hull and Georgia Griffith progressed to the semi-finals of the women’s 1500m. Linden Hall just missed out on progressing automatically and will look to recover for the repechage. 

Tayleb Willis finished fifth in his 110m hurdles repechage in 13.67s. He was disappointed not to progress but what a year the 21-year-old has had.

Ellie Beer ran another impressive 400m. She was fourth in 51.65s, but it wasn’t enough to progress to the semi-finals. In her heat, she ran a personal best of 51.47.

Cameron McEntrye on Olympic debut threw 81.18m but missed progressing to the final by 1.71m. The last time an Australian threw further at the Olympic Games was Jarrod Bannister in 2008. 

Triple Olympian Brooke Buschkuehl was unable to find her best form in the women’s long jumo, and she won’t be back fior he final.

Calab Law didn’t race the 200m repechage round. He decided to save himself for the 4x100m relay where the Australians are targeting the Australian record and a place in the final later in the week.

In the evening session in Paris, 21-year-old Reece Holder, at his first Games, placed fifth in the men’s 400m semi-final in 44.94s. Alanah Yukich raced in the 400m hurdles semi-final, finishing seventh in 55.49s. This was another great run after her personal best of 55.11 in the repechage to make the semis. 

Basketball

A see-sawing quarter-final between two giants of international basketball has resulted in the Boomers falling short, 95-90 in overtime to Serbia, ending their Olympic campaign.

Patty Mills led all scorers with 26 points, dropping 20 of those in a first half that was reminiscent of Patty at previous Olympic tournaments, but Serbia managed to take control of overtime 13-8.

The loss was heartbreaking for the Boomers who had hoped to emulate or better their bronze-medal performance from the Tokyo Games.

“We threw everything at them,” Patty said. “It just wasn’t our day. They played a hell of a game.

Beach Volleyball

The dream of a Paris 2024 medal is alive and kicking after Beach Volleyballers Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy fought off a Swiss onslaught at the Eiffel Tower Stadium.

Punching their ticket to the women’s semi-final where they are guaranteed to be playing for a medal, the Aussies secured victory 2-1 (21-19, 16-21, 15-12) over Zoe Verge-Depre and Esmee Boebner.

They will now face either Brazil or Latvia in the semi-final set to take place at the Eiffel Tower Stadium with the date and time to be confirmed. 

Canoe Sprint 

Tokyo 2020 Olympic champions Tom Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen have bypassed the canoe sprint quarter-finals with a strong and steady performance in the men’s K2 500m heats.

The men’s K4 500m, Riley Fitzsimmons, Pierre van der Westhuyzen, Jackson Collins and Noah Havard went from the heats to the quarter-finals, where they set an Olympic best time of 1:19.39.

In doing so, the K4 500 crew advanced to the semi-finals on Thursday and avoided the chaos of the photo finish for second to fourth between New Zealand, Denmark and Canada.

Ella Beere, Aly Bull, Alexandra Clarke and Yale Steinepreis in the women’s K4 500m placed outside of the three fastest nations in their heat, coming in fourth with a time of 1:34.60 that sees them lineup for the semi-finals on Thursday.

In the women’s K2 500m Ella Beere and Aly Bull are through to the semi-finals and the world champions from the Netherlands have been eliminated.

Cycling – Track

Australia’s Men’s Team Sprint team claimed a history-making track cycling bronze medal, breaking a 24-year drought.

Matthew Glaetzer, Leigh Hoffman and Matthew Richardson delivered a performance for the ages with 41.597 to beat host nation France in the race for bronze.

It was Australia’s first medal in the event since 2000, with plenty of heartache in between.

Earlier on the second night of competition at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome, Australia broke the Men’s Team Pursuit world record.

The four-man team of Kelland O’Brien, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Oliver Bleddyn stunned the crowd when they broke the world mark, disposing of reigning Olympic champions Italy to progress to the gold medal ride against arch rival Great Britain.

Australia’s Women’s Team Pursuit also hit the boards for the first time in qualifying, with Sophie Edwards, Chloe Moran, Maeve Plouffe and Georgia Baker combing to ride 4:08.612, breaking the national record by more than one second.

It was the sixth fastest time in qualifying and will see them ride against France in the first round.

Diving 

Debutant Ellie Cole has closed out her Olympic campaign with an impressive seventh-place finish in the Women’s 10m Platform final, while teammate and five-time Olympian Melissa Wu was 11th.

Ellie finished the competition with a final score of 333.30, while Mel completed her competition with a score of 278.30

Meanwhile Kurtis Mathews’ Olympic campaign is off to a successful start following an eighth-place finish in the preliminary round of the Men’s 3m Springboard. He will aim to secure a spot in the semi-final when he returns to the pool at 6pm AEST on Wednesday

Sailing

A light sea breeze filled the bay, allowing a short window for racing on the waters of Marseille. Two fleets finished their qualification series, the Kite’s managed just one race, whilst Matt Wearn has to wait one more day to fight for gold as the winds died out before his scheduled final race.

Matt’s Medal Race is rescheduled to start from 8pm AEST, with another reserve day on the following day in case the light winds persist.

In the Mixed Dinghy, Nia Jerwood and Conor Nicholas concluded their opening series in fickle winds and scraped into tomorrow’s medal race in ninth position. 

Tokyo 2020 Olympian Nia Jerwood has improved on her performance after finishing 16th at the previous Olympics in the Two-person Dinghy. 

She has secured a top 10 finish and has the opportunity to move up to fifth overall in the new Mixed Dinghy event.

Breiana Whitehead completed just one race in the new Kitesurfing event and sits in 7th position overall going into her penultimate qualifying day.

Skateboarding

Arisa Trew has become Australia’s youngest ever Olympic gold medallist after an extraordinary final run in the women’s Skateboard Park.

Needing to top Japanese skater Cocona Hiraki’s score of 92.63, the 14-year-old laid it all on the line to land a score of 93.18 and claim Australia’s 14th gold medal of the Paris Olympics.

At just 14 years and 86 days old, she takes the crown as the youngest Australian Olympic gold medallist from swimmer Sandra Morgan, who was 14 years and 184 days old when she won gold in Melbourne 1956.

Sport Climbing 

Oceania Mackenzie performed an absolute masterclass at Le Bourget Climbing Venue on Day two of the sport climbing program in Paris 2024. With a near-perfect score of 79.6 for part one of the semi-final, Oceania is placed fourth ahead of the Lead semi-final.

Returning for her second Games with only the boulder section of the semi-finals completed, the Victorian has already improved on her Tokyo 2020 performance, where she placed 19th in the combined format.

Paris 2024 has separated the Sport Climbing disciplines into Speed and a combined Boulder & Lead, playing right into the 22-year-old’s strengths.

Taking a mere 1 minute 20 seconds to solve the first problem, she achieved a perfect score, being one of only two competitors to do so.

Table tennis 

Melissa Tapper nearly pulled off the upset of her career in her final Olympic Table Tennis match, fighting to the very last point against an opponent ranked nearly 200 spots higher than her in Paris.

In a win-or-go-home match in the Women’s Team Table Tennis round of 16, Melissa took a two games to one lead against her Chinese Taipei opponent Chen Szu-Yu at the South Paris Arena.

Looking the stronger of the two for most of the match, Melissa held a 9-8 lead deep in the fourth game as she edged closer to a famous victory and to force the round into a fourth match.

However, Chen clawed her way back to take the fourth, before edging Melissa in the fifth to hold off the Aussie who bowed out of her third Olympics in style.

The loss was the third of the round for Australia, after Melissa and Michelle Bromley lost the doubles match 11-4, 11-3, 11-7 to Chen and Chien Tung-Chuan, and Minhyung Jee lost to Cheng I-Ching 11-5, 11-7, 11-4 in the first singles match. 

Water polo

A resurgent Australian women’s Water Polo team is through to the semi-finals in Paris, defeating Greece 9-6 in the quarter-final in front of a massive and vocal crowd at La Defense Arena.

The victory over Greece was built on strong defence and a five-goal performance from Alice Williams. 

The Stingers will play the USA in the semi-finals, after the Americans defeated Hungary 5-4.