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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.

Two Weeks of Sports Fan Bliss

The Beast and Bolt can dance too

If you’ve been living under a rock the London Olympics are about to get underway this weekend and as you may well have guessed, I couldn’t be more excited. The Summer Olympics and the FIFA World Cup have to be the two biggest sporting events in the world and if you aren’t a football fan then you don’t even care about that one. Even the people I know who simply aren’t into sport have at least some interest in the Olympics.

To name every single event or athlete I’m excited to see would take forever, but I decided to go through several of the things I’m most looking forward to, both from an Australian perspective and also just as a sports fan in general.

First and foremost, you can’t go past the men’s 100m race where the amazing Usain Bolt looks to defend his title from Beijing. For the last 4 years everyone assumed the winner of this race was a mere formality and we just wanted to see what time Bolt would run and how he would celebrate. Not anymore. This race is absolutely up for grabs now after Bolt recently lost his national trials to his training partner Yohan “The Beast” Blake. Blake is also the reigning World Champion, but Bolt was DQed for a false start there.

Americans Tyson Gay and recently back from drug suspension Justin Gatlin (that’s his new full name) will look to play spoiler as well. I still expect Bolt to go to another level and win it, but this race is much more interesting than you might realise.

As a basketball junkie I always get excited to see how the Boomers perform as well as simply watching the American team. There has been a lot of trash talk lately about who would win between the 1992 Dream Team and this year’s team (the answer is the Dream Team and you need to give yourself an uppercut if you even doubt this). The Americans just won a warm up match against their biggest challengers Spain and anything less than gold in convincing fashion would be a shock. Spain, Argentina and France are all good teams as well and will be the biggest challengers.

The Boomers team goes in without our best player in Andrew Bogut and I think our history of making the quarter finals and then bowing out will continue. Hopefully some of our boys can perform well enough to get some international recognition and maybe even open the eyes of some NBA scouts.

Both the track and road cycling will be fascinating as the British hosts look to dominate, as they already began to do in Beijing. Australians have legit medal contenders in most cycling events and I’d love to see us kick it off with gold in the men’s road race, which is the opening event of the Games (not counting the football which has already started).

Everyone knows Australia has great medal chances in the pool and Sally Pearson in the hurdles, but also make sure to watch Mitchell Watt in the men’s long jump. I don’t know how or why, but ever since Jumpin’ Jai Taurima in Sydney we have become serious contenders in the long jump. Apparently white men can jump.

The media and experts seems to be predicting disaster for Australia in the medal tally this year, but I optimistically think we can get into double digits for gold. If the Aussies who are supposed to win, do win, I think people will be pleasantly surprised. Between swimming, diving, cycling, athletics, hockey, sailing, rowing, shooting, equestrian, kayaking, canoeing, beach volleyball and women’s basketball (and I’m sure I’m missing a couple random wins we might pick up like in martial arts or something) Australia has a chance to push 15 gold. I’m going to say 12 and hope I’m short.

I’m sure I’ll write more specifically about some of these events and our medal hopes and results during the event but for now I just feel sorry for all of you with day jobs who can’t stay up all night to watch.