C’mon Aussie… Our women’s 4x200m freestyle relay team has won gold this morning, setting a new Olympic record. The win gives Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariarne Titmus their 2nd gold medals in Paris. And it’s especially sweet for Lani Pallister who pulled out of the 1500m freestyle race to save energy for the relay after a bout of COVID. Go you good things…

The Opals have bounced back (pun intended) from their loss to Nigeria earlier in the week, beating Canada last night 70-65 to keep their Olympic women’s basketballin’ campaign alive. And after coming into the Olympics ranked the lowest, the Gangurrus – aka our women’s 3×3 basketballers named after the Indigenous word for kangaroo – have had 2 big wins overnight, ousting China and defending champs the USA. 

And Melburnian Jemima Montag reckons her ability to weather the Aussie heat helped her to win bronze in the women’s 20km race walk yesterday in temperatures in the high 20s with over 60% humidity. “I was like, ‘Crank it up, let’s cook, I want everyone else to be uncomfortable because I know I’m tough’,” she said. Race walking on hot concrete from the house to the barbie is a rite-of-passage around here…

3 Things Coming Up:

🏃‍♀️ From 6pm – The athletics events kick off tonight with Aussies competing in the qualifying rounds for decathlon, high jump and long jump. We’ve got 75 athletes competing in 39 events, making this our largest ever Olympics athletics squad.

🚣‍♀️ 6.18pm – On the lake, our women Rowsellas are staring down our first medals in rowing, starting with Sydney’s Tara Rigney in the final of the women’s single sculls… Not long after her race, Jess Morrison and Annabelle McIntyre will compete in the women’s pairs final at 7.42pm.

🚣‍♀️ 12.40am – And for the nightowls, Jess Fox and her little sister Noemi are racing in the kayak cross time trials. If they make it through, they’ll go head to head in the final next week. 

🏊‍♀️ 4.30am – We know it’s a Saturday but this will be worth getting up for… Cam McEvoy will race for gold in the 50m freestyle. And straight after that, backstroke kween Kaylee McKeown is chasing her fifth career gold medal when she defends her Toko title in the women’s 200m backstroke final.

* Over the weekend, the Paris Olympics site and downloadable app will be handy for keeping track of what’s on and when. We’re relying on it to navigate things…