[css-div="background-color: #FFF380; padding: 25px; border: double; border-color: #0000; border-width: 17px; text-align: left; width: 650px;"]
This was an interesting Olympics for a lot of nations and Australia is no exception to this. We didn't end up up doing as well in the medals department as we did back in London's 2012 Olympics but in many ways it felt like a greater success. By the same token however, we also had many enormous let downs.
The swimming events tend to be among Australia's strongest events, and in this Olympics we saw some great achievements. Our women's 4x100 Freestyle team successfully defended their Olympic title from London, eighteen-year-old Kyle Chalmers won the hundred meter Freestyle, coming out of nowhere to seize victory and Mac Horton beat China's Sun Yang by a hair in what for us was the showdown of the century due to doping feud between the Chinese Swimmer and Horton - a vocal anti-doping advocate. Sadly however, many of our best swimmers fell short in events they were expected to either win or place in. Neither Campbell sister placed in the hundred Freestyle, Emily Seebohm bombed and Cameron McEvoy failed to place in his own events. Still, with many fresh faces on our swim team and powerhouses like McKeon, Horton and Chalmers heading into Tokyo, I have heigh hopes for us in four years.
Australia did not achieve wonderful results in the team sports. Whilst our Women's Rugby Sevens team were the stars of the Australian Olympic Campaign, dominating their opponents and easily securing gold, the men's team did abysmally. In the Hockey we did terribly too, neither of our teams - including our medal favourite men's team - managed to reach the podium. The basketball didn't go our way either with the Opals managing a fifth and our men's team being screwed out of their first ever Olympic medal by a bullshit foul call in the bronze match with Spain. However, if the Boomers are still this good in four years I'll have high hopes for them to finally achieve that medal there.
I think our saddest results however, came from the Cycling. 2012 champion and our flag bearer from the Opening Ceremony, Anna Mears at the age of thirty two was one of the oldest and most experienced in her field and also thought to be a likely winner. Unfortunately however she achieved only a bronze in the Keiran and missed out entirely in the sprints (where she was expected to win), placing tenth. She is now considering ending her career, but I feel the need to add that I still think she's awesome. As for the BMX... we dominated the heats and semi's and then completely bombed in the finals, seemingly for no reason. There's really not much else to say, I have no idea what the hell happened there.
Despite our disappointments in the team sports and cycling, Australia did have some unlikely successes with our track and field athletes doing better than they have in many years. We had our first finalist in one event in forty years, did the best in the Shotput that we have in a long time and only narrowly missed out in the women's two hundred meter finals. Hopefully this newfound success will continue in the coming years.
These of course were not the only areas we competed in or the only results we achieved great things in (such as the rowing and sailing) or missed out in (like the table tennis), but I don't have a year to go into detail about every event. Overall I'm happy with how we did, let-downs aside, and think that our athletes should be proud. I'm looking forward to seeing if we can keep on the forward path - or in some cases return to it - over the coming years.
That's my thoughts on Australia, I'll be talking a bit about how the rest of you did in my next Olympic entry.
-gimmepie
[/css-div]
How We did
This was an interesting Olympics for a lot of nations and Australia is no exception to this. We didn't end up up doing as well in the medals department as we did back in London's 2012 Olympics but in many ways it felt like a greater success. By the same token however, we also had many enormous let downs.
The swimming events tend to be among Australia's strongest events, and in this Olympics we saw some great achievements. Our women's 4x100 Freestyle team successfully defended their Olympic title from London, eighteen-year-old Kyle Chalmers won the hundred meter Freestyle, coming out of nowhere to seize victory and Mac Horton beat China's Sun Yang by a hair in what for us was the showdown of the century due to doping feud between the Chinese Swimmer and Horton - a vocal anti-doping advocate. Sadly however, many of our best swimmers fell short in events they were expected to either win or place in. Neither Campbell sister placed in the hundred Freestyle, Emily Seebohm bombed and Cameron McEvoy failed to place in his own events. Still, with many fresh faces on our swim team and powerhouses like McKeon, Horton and Chalmers heading into Tokyo, I have heigh hopes for us in four years.
Australia did not achieve wonderful results in the team sports. Whilst our Women's Rugby Sevens team were the stars of the Australian Olympic Campaign, dominating their opponents and easily securing gold, the men's team did abysmally. In the Hockey we did terribly too, neither of our teams - including our medal favourite men's team - managed to reach the podium. The basketball didn't go our way either with the Opals managing a fifth and our men's team being screwed out of their first ever Olympic medal by a bullshit foul call in the bronze match with Spain. However, if the Boomers are still this good in four years I'll have high hopes for them to finally achieve that medal there.
I think our saddest results however, came from the Cycling. 2012 champion and our flag bearer from the Opening Ceremony, Anna Mears at the age of thirty two was one of the oldest and most experienced in her field and also thought to be a likely winner. Unfortunately however she achieved only a bronze in the Keiran and missed out entirely in the sprints (where she was expected to win), placing tenth. She is now considering ending her career, but I feel the need to add that I still think she's awesome. As for the BMX... we dominated the heats and semi's and then completely bombed in the finals, seemingly for no reason. There's really not much else to say, I have no idea what the hell happened there.
Despite our disappointments in the team sports and cycling, Australia did have some unlikely successes with our track and field athletes doing better than they have in many years. We had our first finalist in one event in forty years, did the best in the Shotput that we have in a long time and only narrowly missed out in the women's two hundred meter finals. Hopefully this newfound success will continue in the coming years.
These of course were not the only areas we competed in or the only results we achieved great things in (such as the rowing and sailing) or missed out in (like the table tennis), but I don't have a year to go into detail about every event. Overall I'm happy with how we did, let-downs aside, and think that our athletes should be proud. I'm looking forward to seeing if we can keep on the forward path - or in some cases return to it - over the coming years.
That's my thoughts on Australia, I'll be talking a bit about how the rest of you did in my next Olympic entry.
-gimmepie
[/css-div]
