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Sally Pearson and Anna Meares.... Wait... That's not right

So this blog is in some ways a sequel to my previous blog about losing. Finally we have tasted some success with three gold medals in only two days. I’ll certainly say this for losing... it makes winning taste that much better when it finally arrives. This is where I should make some sort of Rabbitohs comment, but I’m too superstitious to predict anything so I’ll shut up about that right now.

First Tom Slingsby did what he was originally expected to do in Beijing, by dominating the Laser class sailing regatta and winning gold comfortably. He was dominant throughout the series and he helped ease the collective pressure and anxiety the entire nation was feeling, even if 99% of the country hadn’t heard his name until about an hour before he officially won the event, or even the next day.

In fact, Australia is not done in the sailing as we have teams who are in front/favoured to win three other categories. The Men’s 49er class literally just need to show up and start their final race to claim gold, the Men’s 470 class are in front, but those dastardly Brits are not too far behind so they will have to earn it by sticking with the Brits in the final race, much like Slingsby did with his Cypriot challenger to win his. We also went undefeated during the round robin stage of the Women’s 6m Elliott class, although that event works differently to the others, so they are now in a quarter final battle against the Dutch and you never know what could happen there.

Meanwhile, whilst the sailing is great, the real story is the success of our very own Golden Girls. Sally Pearson and Anna Meares have been high profile athletes for years and carried not only the burden of expectation they knew they would have, but also the increased pressure of needing to make up for the nation’s poor showing to date.

If Anna had lost to her arch-rival Victoria Pendleton again, everyone would be disappointed by understand as Pendleton has been the best in that field for so long, but to finally get one up over her great rival with the entire country needing her to do it, took super human balls to go along with her super human thighs.

Sally on the other hand, I can’t even begin to imagine the pressure on her going into her final. Many people had simply assumed she’d win gold and that would be that. But Sally was facing several worthy opponents, as well as the fact that hurdles is one of those sports where it can all go wrong very quickly and out of nowhere. No hurdles race is ever guaranteed, as the tiniest clip of a hurdle and you are put off for the entire race and you don’t even need to fall over. But knowing the stakes, knowing how close she came four years earlier, knowing the pressure and expectation she carried, she went out there and ran an Olympic record to win by the barest of margins. If Anna Meares has super human balls, then Sally Pearson must possess Vince McMahon’s legendary grapefruits.

Now the two of them can fight over who gets to carry the flag at the closing ceremony.

So where to now for the Aussies?

Firstly I’d say the remaining Australian contenders should be able to relax just a little as whilst 4 gold medals isn’t great, we should add those sailing golds and the pressure to come through will subside, if only the slightest bit. Plus, I would imagine it would be very inspiring to the remaining athletes to see what Anna and Sally accomplished.

The best case scenario I can fathom now would be somehow getting to 10 gold medals. That would require winning the three sailing events, the men’s hockey and another couple of events such as the BMX events, the open water swimming, equestrian, maybe Steve Hooker finds form at the right time or perhaps the Opals find a way past the Americans in their semi final. More realistically I think we can get to eight, which is two-thirds of what I predicted before the Olympics and considering how dire things looked a few days ago, it isn’t the worst result.

Not getting to double digits would hurt, but we have certainly uncovered some stars of the future such as Jessica Fox and Vaucluse’s own Steve Solomon.

When you think about it, it would be quite amazing to get to eight when we will have won a total of two gold medals from the three sports that usually are our bread and butter in swimming, cycling and rowing. If those three sports alone get their act together going into Rio, we should be fine. Although that is a massive ‘if’.

But, if nothing else, it won’t be so hard to watch the rest of these Olympics after we finally got that sweet, sweet taste of victory.