Nina Kennedy stole the show at the Paris Olympics on day 12, becoming the first Australian woman to win a gold medal in an Olympic field event as she took out the women's pole vault.
Kennedy was one of six Australian medallists, but plenty more weird, wacky and wonderful things took place in Paris. Here are your quick hits from day 12 of the Olympic Games.
1. Nina Kennedy plays for keeps this time in pole vault final
Nina Kennedy showed just how far she'd come in 12 months after showcasing a ruthless edge in the pole vault final as she beat the reigning Olympic champion Katie Moon.
Kennedy and Moon famously shared the gold medal for the event at last year's finals in Budapest, with the Aussie criticised by some for a gesture that was otherwise widely seen as sporting.
This time, however, there was going to be no sharing from the Aussie. She believed the gold was hers solely. It was a stark contrast to the scenes in Budapest where Kennedy seemed honoured to be sharing the gold medal, admitting at the time, "I didn't think she would want to share it."
While Kennedy had defended her decision to share the medal, labelling it "super special" at the time, she was adamant coming into Paris that if the same scenario presented itself, she'd continue jumping.
And jump she did, higher than Moon or any of her other competitors could, topping out at 4.90m, well above the 4.40m mark she recorded while jumping injured in Tokyo three years ago.
"That was the question I had been asked the very most 'are you going to share the medal?'" she said.
"And deep down, I knew I wasn't going to.
"I wanted that outright gold medal.
"And I became really confident in talking to the media and it was really, really scary, really vulnerable, to lay it all out there and say it.
"What's so special about an Olympics is that it happens every four years, and we have known this date, it has been in my calendar for so long, to the hour, to the minute, to the absolute second.
"You have to piece it all together, and that's what I did."
2. Jemima Montag creates history with second track and field medal
Jemima Montag etched her name into Australian track and field history after claiming bronze in the mixed relay race walk marathon.
She — and teammate Rhydian Cowley — were part of the maiden podium in the event which debuted at the Olympic Games on Wednesday.
Loading...For Montag, there was individual glory she attained when the medal was put around her neck.
Montag became just the ninth Australian to win multiple medals in track and field at the same Olympic Games.
Her bronze on Wednesday followed the bronze she won in the women's 20km race walk six days earlier.
She knew the significance as well, being told by her coach in the lead up to the relay marathon about what she could achieve.
"Any time someone dangles a carrot, that competitor in me has to go after it," Montag said.
Aussies to win multiple track and field medals at single Olympic Games
- Edwin Flack, 1896 — 800m gold, 1,500m gold
- Stan Rowley, 1900 — 60m bronze, 100m bronze, 200m bronze
- Shirley Strickland, 1948 — 100m bronze, 80m hurdles bronze, 4x100m relay silver
- Shirley Strickland, 1952 — 80m hurdles gold, 100m bronze
- Shirley Strickland, 1956 — 4x100m relay gold, 80m hurdles gold
- Marjorie Jackson, 1952 — 100m gold, 200m gold
- Betty Cuthbert, 1956 — 100m gold, 200m gold, 4x100m relay gold
- Marlene Matthews, 1956 — 100m bronze, 200m bronze
- Raelene Boyle, 1972 — 100m silver, 200m silver
- Jared Tallent, 2008 — 50km walk silver, 20km walk bronze
- Jemima Montag, 2024 — 20km walk bronze, marathon walk relay bronze
3. Matthew Richardson's world record lasts just minutes
Fresh from winning a bronze in the team event, Matthew Richardson was laser-focused as he hit the Paris velodrome for the flying start 200-metre sprint, tongue out, as he delivered what commentators described as an "astonishing ride".
When he crossed the line at 9.091 seconds, he tore down the world record set by Nicholas Paul from Trinidad and Tobago in September 2019, who was also riding in the qualifier.
The moment put Australians in the crowd to their feet, waving inflatable kangaroos and flags as their man set the fastest time ever, in a qualifying round no less.
Richardson waved and pointed to the crowd.
But Australia would not hold the record for long.
The five-time world champion and favourite Harrie Lavreysen absolutely surged from the first moments of his run.
He looked every bit the rider who won two golds.
Lavreysen was able to shave an incredible 0.003 seconds off Richardson at 9.088 seconds, snatching the record that the Australian had broken just minutes earlier.
The pair will face off again in the final later this week.
4. Indian wrestling star disqualified before gold medal match
Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat, who had been a sensation in the women's 50kg freestyle, was disqualified just hours before the gold medal match after failing to make weight.
Vinesh had been set to lock horns with Sarah Hildebrandt of the United States for the gold medal. The disqualification means she will not receive a medal of any colour.
She was an unseeded competitor who caused one of the upsets of the Olympic Games when she defeated defending Olympic champion Yui Susaki of Japan in the opening round.
She had made weight on the first day of the competition, but did not make the cut on the morning of the gold medal match.
"It is with regret that the Indian contingent shares news of the disqualification of Vinesh Phogat from the women's wrestling 50kg class," the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) said in a statement.
"Despite the best efforts by the team through the night, she weighed in a few grams over 50kg this morning."
Hildebrandt faced Yusneylis Guzman for the gold medal.
5. Runners go down while a cameraman joins the race in chaotic scenes
After years of sacrifice and training, dedicating your life to an Olympic dream, sometimes fate is not in your favour.
Five athletes took tumbles in the two 5,000-metre heats on day 12 in Paris.
British runner George Mills was left fuming after he fell along with several other athletes at the final turn of the first heat.
He had a heated discussion with fellow competitor Hugo Hay directly following the race.
But the casualty list from the 5,000m could have been more after a cameraman wandered right into the path of oncoming athletes during the second heat.
While that apparent brain fade didn't lead to any collisions, it certainly gave runners an almighty fright.
"I see something is happening. It's a big camera, so it was bad for many. I'm very ready for things happening on the tracks if someone is falling or something happening," heat winner Jakob Ingebrigsten said.
"Sometimes things happen on the course. Maybe cameramen are full of adrenaline and they jump on the field.
"If it's somewhere it shouldn't be happening, it's in the Olympics. I think he understood very fast, but the damage was already done."
6. 100m champion Noah Lyles continues his pre-finals struggles
What was supposed to be the easy half of Noah Lyles' historic Olympic sprint double isn't looking quite so easy anymore.
Newly crowned the fastest man alive after a close-as-can-be win by five thousandths of a second in the 100m final at the 2024 Games, Lyles was not even the fastest man in his semifinal of the 200m on Thursday morning. He was good enough to make it into that event's final, anyway.
The 200m is Lyles' preferred, and better, distance — one at which he had not lost a race in three full years. That streak was snapped at the Stade de France, where Letsile Tebogo of Botswana beat him to the line by crossing in 19.96 seconds, 0.12 faster than runner-up Lyles.
They'll have a rematch for the gold on Friday morning.
It raised some eyebrows when Lyles skipped the interview area after the semifinal, and US team officials said he was heading to the medical tent. His coach, Lance Brauman, told The Associated Press: "He's fine."
That might just add a bit more intrigue in the 24 hours until the medals are at stake.
There already was plenty.
Is Lyles, a 27-year-old from Florida, at his best? How much did he care about the semifinal, when lane placements are determined but all that truly matters is moving on to the round that determines the medals? Will Lyles find some extra fuel from being outdone in front of a full house of about 80,000?
Was the 21-year-old Tebogo, the 200m bronze medallist at worlds but making his Olympic debut, trying to send a message? Is he ready to challenge for a gold?
7. Israeli athletes receive threats amid tensions over Palestinian deaths
Israel's Olympic team said some athletes have received threats as they compete in Paris amid larger tensions over Palestinian deaths during the war in Gaza and the threat of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East.
Yael Arad, president of the Israeli National Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press earlier this week that team members had received "centralised" threats meant to generate "psychological terror" in athletes, without giving further details.
Last week, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into emailed death threats to Israeli athletes, and the national cybercrime agency is looking into the leak of some Israeli athletes' personal data online, which has since been taken down.
Prosecutors also launched an inquiry into inciting racial hatred after Israeli athletes received ''discriminatory gestures" during an Israel-Paraguay match.
Tom Reuveny, a 24-year-old Israeli athlete who won a gold in wind surfing over the weekend, was among those who said he's received threats.
Politics "should be put aside" during the Games, he told AP, speaking during a memorial on Tuesday of the deadly attack that targeted the Israeli delegation at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany.
The September 5, 1972, assault by the Palestinian group Black September killed 11 Israelis and a police officer.
"I don't think any politics should be involved in sport, especially in the Olympic Games," Reuveny said.
"Unfortunately, there is a lot of politics involved — not in the Games — of the people who don't want us to compete and don't want us to be here. I've gotten quite a few messages and threats."
While Israel has called for the Olympics to remain a neutral space, the Palestinian delegation has used the Games as a way to generate conversation about the day-to-day struggles of those in Gaza.
"The thing that really hurts me is that people are looking at Palestinians as just numbers now. The number of people that died. The number of people displaced," Palestinian American Olympic swimmer Valerie Tarazi told the AP on Monday.
"As athletes, we're here just as everyone else. We want to compete. As people, we have lives … We want to live in our homes, just like everyone else in the world," she added.
8. Unique move helps Sweden reach men's volleyball medal round
A pair of 22-year-old Swedes has risen to the top of the beach volleyball world with an innovative technique that could prove to be as revolutionary as the forward pass in football or high jumping's Fosbury Flop.
The "Swedish Jump-Set," as it has become known, is a move in which the player jumps as if to spike the ball but instead sets it to his partner. The misdirection forces the opponent to leave his feet, so that he is out of position when the ball is actually passed.
"We call it the modern style of beach volleyball," Australia's Mark Nicolaidis said after losing to the Swedish team of David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig in the preliminary stage at the Paris Olympics.
"Every sport gets to a point where what's been working for the last five, 10, 20 years doesn't work anymore. There have to be some people that innovate the game.
"Some of the work they've been doing was a big risk when they first came on the tour," Nicolaidis said. "They've crafted a really good game style and it's been working consistently for the past few years."
Volleyball, and its beach offshoot, are three-touch games where for decades the usual sequence has been bump-set-spike: One player receives the ball and passes it forward to a setter, who then lofts it above the net to set up his partner for the kill.
All teams occasionally hit the ball over the net on the second shot — whether as an element of surprise or because their partner, having dived for a ball, is out of position. But the Swedes are the first to rely on the jump-set as a first option.
"We know that if we're going to win matches we have to go for it every ball," Hellvig said. "And, it's when we play normal 1-2-3 — that's when we don't perform as well. So we know that we just have to keep going for it, and have no doubts."
The Swedes didn't invent the jump-set; a Polish team of Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak, who went to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, is often credited as the pioneers as part of an offence that featured misdirection and speed.
9. Opals set up blockbuster basketball semifinal meeting with USA
The Opals are readying for Mission Impossible after a crushing quarter-final defeat of Serbia continued their remarkable Olympics resurgence.
The Australian women's basketball team won 85-67 at Paris's Bercy Arena on Wednesday night to book a likely semi-final with seven-time defending champions the United States.
They led by 28 at one stage, answering Serbia's seven-point run to score the next 17 and kill off the contest in an emphatic prelude to basketball's toughest ask.
The US haven't lost a game at the Olympics since 1992, notching 58 consecutive wins, 56 of those in double figures.
Their all-time Games record is 72-3, winning gold in nine out of 11 tournaments entered.
"People expect the Opals to win, but the game continues to get better … it's not easy," Australia's coach Sandy Brondello said.
She stressed they hadn't played together once as a full squad in the lead-up due to the WNBA players, and herself as a coach in the league, being committed in the United States.
"We have now and we continue to grow," the coach said.
"This is where we think we belong, but you have to earn it.
"I'm proud of them … (but) I'm not super-excited, because it's not over. We have an opportunity now to win a medal, but we have to win a medal."
ABC/AAP/AP
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