A record 18 gold medals. 53 medals in total – the most ever won offshore. Fourth place on the final medal tally – and even higher on the per capita tally.
Yep, Australia’s 2024 Olympics was truly spectacular.
From our best ever Day 1 of a Games, through to our best day ever – period – with four gold medals and two bronze on Day 12, our Aussie Olympians took all before them and did our nation proud on the world stage.
Along the way, there were memorable moments galore – Saya Sakakibara’s emotional BMX gold medal and tribute to brother Kai, Noemie Fox stepping out of iconic sister Jessica’s shadow to claim gold in the new and highly popular kayak cross event, 14-year old Arisa Trew becoming our youngest ever gold medallist, and countless more to delight and captivate us watching from our couches at home.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and we must go from obsessively screaming at the TV whenever an Aussie Stinger was fouled or criticising Georgie Baker’s tactics in the points race of the women’s omnium, back to forgetting those sports exist for the next four years. Plus ça change, eh?
But it’s worth looking back at all that happened over the last three weeks in Paris. Some glories stood out higher than others, and some, sadly, return to Australia with disappointment as their only companion – though there were precious few of the latter.
Here are our seven big winners – and five losers – from the Paris Olympics.
Winners
The Dolphins
Australia expects greatness from all our athletes on the world stage, but really, it’s our swimmers who truly carry the weight of the nation at every Olympics.
Ever since a tremendously disappointing single gold medal – and rumours of cultural unrest – at the 2012 Olympics in London, the Dolphins have been nothing short of brilliant. And on both a team and individual level, our swimmers lived up to all our expectations, and then some, in the city of love.
All up, 19 medals were claimed in the pool, eight of them gold – one shy of ending the USA’s 36-year stranglehold on the swimming leaderboard, and one off the Dolphins’ best-ever mark of nine set in Tokyo in 2021.
Along the way, heroes became legends: Ariarne Titmus defended her 400m freestyle title in devastating fashion over old rival Katie Ledecky and new foe Summer McIntosh; Cameron McEvoy finally broke through for his maiden gold medal in the 50m freestyle after 12 years of narrow misses and heartbreak galore; Mollie O’Callaghan emerged as the Grant Hackett to Titmus’ Ian Thorpe with an Australia-best three gold medals, the highlight a brilliant swim for gold – and Olympic record – in the 200m freestyle.
Emma McKeon bowed out as our most decorated Olympian ever with a sixth career gold medal as part of our all-conquering women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team, adding a silver and a bronze to finish with 14 medals in all, five clear of a logjam in second spot.
But of course, the main event in the pool was backstroke queen Kaylee McKeown, who, in claiming gold in both the 100m and 200m backstroke events, became just the second person ever, male or female, to defend the ‘double crown’ in the event. And just for good measure, the medals took her individual tally to six Olympic golds, the most in Australian history, surpassing Thorpey himself. (And, briefly equal-top, Jessica Fox – but more on her later).
All up, 37 medals were won by Australian swimmers at the Games if you count one medal per relay competitor. Of them, a whopping 23 were won by women.
Yeah, and I can’t stress this enough, the girls.
Lani Pallister of Team Australia embraces teammates after winning gold in the Women’s 4x200m Freestyle Relay. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Noemie Fox
There’s nothing like getting one up on a spotlight-hogging older sister.
That’s exceptionally harsh on Jessica Fox, the three-time Olympic gold medallist and certified Australian legend; but safe to say it probably hasn’t been easy over the last 12 years for Noemie Fox to see her sister become the darling of the nation while she toiled away waiting for her chance to shine.
And after Jess claimed two more golds in a glorious run in her canoe slalom events, Noemie, three years her junior, got her opportunity via the Olympics’ newest – and coolest – event: the kayak cross.
Pitting its competitors directly against one another, as opposed to the ‘one at a time’ nature of the slalom, Jess by her own admission wasn’t ideally suited to the event’s unique demands, and failed to make it out of her heat (cruelly, Noemie was one of the ones whose run saw her eliminated).
Now relegated to spectator, the same role her younger sister has played for her for years, the 30-year old, and the rest of Australia, watched on, expectations growing all the while. An emphatic first place in her quarter-finals; next, an equally spectacular win in her semi to storm into the final as the top seed.
She couldn’t… could she?
With the nation watching on in the early hours of the morning Australian time, Noemie made sure it was worth the late bedtime (and for this author, the very delayed watching of the disappointing House of the Dragon series finale).
In a tight tussle with pre-event favourite Kimberley Woods, the 27-year old kept her nerve, cruised smoothly through the early stages; and then at the final gate, had the stroke of luck every champion needs when the oncoming Woods, trying desperately to make her ground, tapped the gate around Fox’s head, giving her the green light to cruise to what was an eventually emphatic gold medal win.
“Olympic dreams are made of these!” Nine commentator David Culbert, proving the equal to the occasion, proclaimed as Fox crossed the finish line, threw her oar away in triumph, and became overwhelmed with emotion.
“She didn’t just make the Olympics,” he soon added, “she won the Olympics!”
Next to him, proud father Richard, who watched on with tears in his eyes as Jessica secured the gold she long craved at the Tokyo Games, was barely able to speak.
As mother Myriam and Jessica herself, as jubilant as if she herself had claimed the win, jumped into the water to celebrate with the youngest Fox, it was impossible to not get caught up in the emotion.
No longer just Jess’s younger sister, it was official: Noemie Fox’s name was up in lights.
And in a heavily competitive field, her triumph was this author’s favourite moment from the 2024 Olympic Games.
The Stingers
For all Australia achieved in Paris, one notable disappointment was our performance in the team sports. More on a few of them later.
But with first the men’s and women’s rugby sevens teams failing to so much as medal, then the Matildas crashing out in the group stage, then the Boomers blowing a 24-point lead to Serbia in their quarter-final, the team stage for the last few days of the Games was all about the water polo.
But while the men’s team – the Sharks – briefly shone, downing the mighty Serbia in the group stage, they’d fade, a horror loss to Japan preceding a quarter-final defeat to the Netherlands to quietly bow out of contention.
Not so the women’s team, now known around the nation as the Stingers, who became yet another example of the extraordinary deeds performed at these Games by our female competitors.
You couldn’t take your eyes off them in the group: it’s hard to look anywhere else when an Australia team is engaged in a 20-shot penalty shootout, twice saved from the brink of defeat by the brilliance of shot-stopper Genevieve Longman, against 2008 champions the Netherlands.
They won that; then, days later, they repeated the dose, sneaking past reigning bronze medallists Hungary in another shootout classic.
Previous unknowns to the general Australian public becoming household names were in abundance; the lethal left arm of Abby Andrews, the calm leadership of Zoe Arancini, and of course, the heroics of goalkeepers Longman and Gabriella Palm.
It was Andrews who inspired a famous triumph over three-time reigning gold medallists the USA in a classic semi-final, scoring four goals in the third quarter alone; when Palm stoically saved the final USA penalty to secure a Stingers win, and ensure a first medal since the 2012 Games, the joy was plain for all to see.
And having been played at an ungodly hour, we shared their pride when we woke up the next morning and checked the scores on Google.
So, when the final was set to be played at the perfectly reasonable time of 11:35pm on Saturday night, the nation huddled around its TV screens or streaming laptops, and collectively cheered our Aussies on in the pool.
The gold medal dream was not to be, sadly, as a clinical Spain withstood everything the Stingers could throw at them to claim a well-deserved gold after silver behind the Americans in both 2012 and 2020.
But with women’s team sport in Australia dominated by mentions of the Matildas, or the Opals, or the Diamonds, or the cricket team that doesn’t have a specific nickname but nevertheless wins an awful lot, we had a new group of women we were proud to call our own.
2028 can’t come soon enough.
Saya Sakakibara
The best backstory of any Australian gold medal in Paris.
Being a competitive athlete oft takes a heavy, heavy toll, and the Sakakibara family know that better than most.
In 2020, older brother Kai, her inspiration to take up BMX riding, was lucky to survive after a horror crash in a tournament in Bathurst; suffering horrific brain injuries, he would never compete again.
Competing on her own in Tokyo, Saya endured heartbreak of her own: crashing out early in the competition, she cut a devastated figure when interviewed by Seven, having dedicated her Olympic campaign to Kai and the pursuit of a medal he now couldn’t win for himself.
“This is so disappointing. I feel that I let everyone down, especially my brother,” she admitted post-race.
Having come close to quitting the sport following her 2021 disappointment, Sakakibara had one goal heading to Paris, and then into the BMX final.
“As I rocked up today, it was six o’clock. I knew that it was going to end at 10pm and I was like, ‘I’m going to make these four hours the most proud I’ve ever been of myself’,” she said after the race that would change her life.
A spectacular, gripping race ensued, with the 24-year old taking the lead early and never relenting, on the way to claiming a sweet, and richly deserved, gold medal.
Her path to glory was already a heartwarming one, but it was her reaction to fulfilling a lifelong dream that truly made her an Australian legend: interviewed by Nine, the string of F-bombs she dropped told of a woman utterly overawed with what she had achieved.
“I knew it just comes down to a split second, and all I had to do was just f–king go, and I just f–ing went. I just didn’t want to leave her without giving it my…” was as far as she got, before bursting into tears – and melting all of our hearts.
Then, a few hours later, she became even more iconic: when told by reporter Brooke Boney that ‘we don’t mind a cheeky F-bomb now and then’, Sakakibara laughed, replied ‘Great’, leaned in, and uttered the best three words of the whole Olympics:
“LET’S F–KING GOOOOO!”
Stone. Cold. Legend.
Anna Meares
As a two-time Olympic gold medallist and one of Australia’s greatest ever track cyclists, Meares was already enshrined as an Australian great even before she was chosen as Chef de Mission for our 2024 Olympic team.
A reserved yet firm personality who famously remarked ‘this is sport… we’re not here to have a cup of tea’ after claiming her second gold in 2012 when rival Victoria Pendleton was disqualified during her sprint final for illegal moving off her line, allegedly due to Meares’ aggressive tactics, the 40-year old prove a superb choice, providing firm leadership, tackling any issues head-on and in general providing a steady hand at the tiller.
Comparisons with Kitty Chiller, who dominated headlines in the lead-up to and during the 2016 Games, most of them unfavourable, for her brutal insistance on discipline, are obvious: Meares was never the centre stage in Paris, nor did she ever hog the spotlight, allowing the brilliance of our athletes to do all the talking.
Faced with rare moments of adversity, she led with aplomb: when men’s hockey player Tom Craig was arrested for attempting to buy cocaine (more on him later), she and the Australian Olympic Committee were upfront, honest with the press and quick to take action, all while never throwing Craig, a young man who made a mistake, under the bus.
“I cannot condone what Tom has done. He is a good person who made a bad decision. But there are consequences for decisions like this,” Meares said.
“Our team has been exemplary at these Games and his actions do not reflect the values of the team, nor does it diminish this team’s performance.
“He has apologised, shown remorse, he has owned up to his mistake, and we will support him if he needs help.”
Simple, effective, clear communication. A remorseful athlete dealt with, punished accordingly, and all dealt with fast enough to avoid a media circus. A few hours of headlines as the story broke was as big as it got. They should talk about it in Crisis Management 101.
Meares was equally brilliant, if slightly more controversial, in her staunch defence of breakdancer Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn, whose performance during the first ever Olympics breaking event made worldwide headlines, launched thousands of memes, and made Gunn either a figure to mock or one to ridicule as an Olympian unworthy of the honour of representing Australia.
“What has occurred on social media with trolls and keyboard warriors, and taking those comments and giving them air time, has been really disappointing,” Meares said pointedly.
“For someone to win in sport you need someone to not win in sport; the fact is that yes, Rachael didn’t get a point yesterday, but she was there doing her best.
“It takes a lot of courage to walk out into any sporting environment and try to have a go… how can we continue to encourage our kids to do that when we’re prepared to slam our athletes who do it on a global stage?”
Whether you agree with Meares that the reaction to Gunn’s performance was over the top and unnecessarily cruel, or a just response to an embarrassing farce, this is exactly what a Chef de Mission is supposed to do: stick up for her athletes above all else, respond to external criticism, and give private and public assurance that those that matter have their back.
It will be a long time before we see someone do better in such a key role.
Richmond Football Club
It’s been a rough year for the Tigers in the AFL; with just two wins after 21 rounds and sitting dead last on the ladder, there has been precious little to cheer for the yellow and black army, and plenty of triple-premiership box set DVDs would have got a good working over in the last few months.
Thankfully, though, any Richmond supporters tuning into the Olympics for something else to watch other than their team getting clobbered would have been pleasantly surprised to see a familiar name on fire for Australia in the Velodrome in the second week of the Games: a previously little-known track cyclist by the name of Matthew Richardson.
No, not the lovable, high-marking, spray-giving, set-shot-shanking ‘Richo’ whose travails in terrible Tiger teams in the 1990s and 2000s made him a Punt Road legend – this Richardson, a dual Commonwealth Games gold medallist in 2022, added three medals to Australia’s burgeoning tally, two silvers and a bronze.
Regularly dominating his heats and semi-finals, it was only the brilliance of Dutch rival – and potential track GOAT – Harrie Lavreysen that denied Richardson a gold or two. Narrowly pipping the Aussie for gold in both the men’s sprint and men’s keirin events, and helping set a new world record in the team sprint, the 27-year old five-time Olympic champion made Richardson a perfect parallel to his Australian Rules namesake – a wonderful competitor who left it all out there with every ride, and whose legacy is secure even without the most coveted title
At just 25, though, Richardson has every chance to still be around and gunning for medals at the 2028 Olympics: but even if he doesn’t, three medals is nothing to be sneezed at.
Raygun
Okay, hear me out.
Yes, the reaction both in Australia and around the world to Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn’s performance in the women’s breakdancing event was… problematic.
You can make legitimate arguments that Gunn’s bizarre display, which earned her exactly zero points and the scorn of a nation, showed up the problems inherent in our qualification process for the event; or that breakdancing itself is a silly endeavour rightly flicked off the list of events for Los Angeles in 2028; or that if we were going to send someone to represent us in this most modern of ‘sports’, it probably shouldn’t have been a white academic born on Sydney’s upper north shore.
But here’s the thing: in Australian sports, it’s all about being remembered. And there’s absolutely no doubt whose performance everyone in the world will remember out of the 2024 Olympics breakdancing event.
No Gunn will never be hailed as an Olympic icon. She will never be revered like McKeown, or Titmus, or the Foxes, or Sakakibara. No medal will adorn her trophy room as a testament to her years of hard work and sacrifice.
But if she leans into the skid, accepts the ribald mockery at her expense and can laugh at herself, opportunities will open up all the same. As the ABC’s Matt Bevan proclaimed, she could walk into an FM radio gig right now if she wanted.
Australia has always had a place for the humour, and I think we’ll be surprised how quickly the anger of a lot of people will turn into wistful mirth.
If Gunn can harness that, then she might come away from these Games with as big a profile as any of the athletes whose performances in Paris made us proud.
Raygun competes during the breaking round robin at La Concorde in Paris. (Photo by Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
Losers
Tom Craig
After good news story after good news story to start the Olympics, the first Australian scandal of the Games was always going to stir up a press pack keen for the chance to report on something salacious for once.
They at last got their wish when, after both the Kookaburras and Hockeyroos were eliminated from their tournaments with quarter-final defeats, a member of the squad, soon confirmed to be Craig, was arrested on the streets of Paris while trying to buy a gram of cocaine.
The swift and open response of the Australian Olympic Committee in confirming the details to the media and getting on top of the story, as well as Craig’s genuine show of remorse when fronting the press after being released, mitigated the scandal, as did French laws allowing him to walk free with only an official warning and not anything more substantial.
Let’s get two things out of the way quickly. One: Tom Craig is, almost certainly, not the only Australian Olympian who touched cocaine at some point in Paris. That’s just maths, as well as the natural reality of any cashed-up twentysomething in a group environment. AFL and NRL clubs are facing a proper crisis in dealing with illicit drug use, for one thing, and in broader society snorting a line is basically a Tuesday in some lines of work.
And two: as an Olympian representing the country, and partially funded by our taxpayer dollars, it’s right to judge Craig and the rest of Team Australia to different standards than us normal folk. Maybe just restrict your celebrations to the classically Aussie – and totally legal – pursuit of inhaling two dozen beers, throwing up and passing out in the back of the Uber your mates bought for you to get you home safe. Or whatever the Olympic equivalent is.
(As an aside: I found it extremely funny that, according to reports, Craig was arrested mid-purchase literally 15 minutes after a Kookaburras function had ended, at around 8pm Paris time. Old mate just couldn’t wait.)
Tom Craig is a young man and an excellent hockey player who did a dumb thing – whether it’s trying to buy cocaine in the first place or just getting caught doing it is a matter of opinion.
But whichever way you slice it, it’s pretty clear which Olympian departs from Paris with the most egg on their face.
The Matildas
Oof.
There’s nuance involved in assessing how our most popular national team fared in Paris: missing their greatest ever player and key talisman, a team ranked 12th in the world heading into the Olympics failed to make it to an eight-team knockout stage.
But when you’ve spent the last four years gloriously defying all expectations, as well as our nation’s miserable football history, and won all our hearts forever, any letdown whatsoever was going to feel devastating.
And having crashed out in the group stage via a dismal loss to Germany, a pretty farcical 6-5 triumph over minnows Zambia, and then waited far too long to fire a shot in a fate-sealing loss to the USA, it’s fair to say Tony Gustavsson’s team leave Paris having had their reputations more trashed than anyone else who represented Australia at the Games.
Fourth-placed finishes at the 2021 Olympics and last year’s World Cup, as emotional and fantastic and mesmerising as they were, now get seen in a different light, too: were the Tillies simply lucky to get that far, especially with Gustavsson’s much-maligned tactics holding them back? Were we just riding on the coat-tails of the generational talent that is Sam Kerr, who at 30 years old is closer to the end of her glittering career than the beginning?
After so many highs in recent years, this was a reality check for Australian football, and a reminder for the powers that be that making a nation fall in love with you, at the end of the day, is about more than character, or personality, or style. It’s about winning.
The Matildas look dejected after their Olympic loss to Germany. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Richard Fox
“Poor dad is the only one without an Olympic medal!”
Australia’s most savage moment of the Games came by accident, when Jessica Fox – an emotional wreck in an interview with Nine moments after Noemie’s stunning gold medal win – pointed out to the entire country that Richard was now left high and dry behind both his daughters and his wife as lacking a medal of any colour.
The poor bugger finished fourth in the K1 event in 1992, but that’s as close as he got to the podium – though as he was representing England, it’s fair to say few in Australia cared all that much about him 32 years ago.
Now, though, the eldest Fox is known around the country as one of the great dads; he inspired both his daughters to follow in his footsteps in the canoe slalom, was front and centre as they progressed up the rankings, and has been on hand, beaming and blinking away tears, as both Jessica and Noemie claimed their four combined golds across Tokyo and Paris.
Sometimes we just get outshone by those we love most. There’s no shame in that, especially when your family is the fantastic Foxes.
It seems harsh calling him a loser, though – but if Jess herself can basically say the same thing on live TV, I reckon I can, too.
The marathon selection committee
The spiciest headlines in the lead-up to the Olympics revolved around the controversy surrounding the Australian marathon team: specifically, the omission of Lisa Weightman from the Olympic squad.
All that drama came to a head when Sinead Diver, having reportedly battled injuries in the lead-up to the event and far from full fitness, withdrew from the women’s marathon after just 1.2 kilometres.
It was revealed to Nine that Weightman, and Athletics Australia, had known about Diver’s ailments, which include plantar fasciitis, for weeks before the event, and that she had been willing to fly over to Paris with as little as 72 hours’ notice before the marathon began.
“You have to feel for athletes like Lisa Weightman at home watching this, because it was heartbreaking for her to not make the team,” Nine’s Tamsyn Manou said on commentary.
The lack of an on-hand replacement for Diver, whether Weightman or someone else, was brutally exposed. And after a Games in which nearly everything went right for Australia, you can expect this key failing to come under even more intense scrutiny than had we endured a more difficult, less triumphant Olympics campaign.
The 2004 Australian Olympic Team
Oh, what’s that, Ian Thorpe? Say again, Sara Carrigan? Qu’est-ce que tu as dit, Libby Trickett? You’re not on top anymore?
As Australia’s 2024 medal tally, gold or otherwise, surged into the stratosphere, it left every other Aussie Olympic team, save for 2000 when we had home ground advantage, in the dust.
Worst hit by the gold rush was the 2004 Athens team, featuring titans of Australian sport from Thorpe, to Grant Hackett, to Meares herself.
Their 17 gold medals, equalled but not surpassed in Tokyo three years ago? Usurped. Their overseas Olympic record 50 gold medals? Au revoir.
Australia’s athletes made history in Paris in 2024. And in so doing, previous history has to take its place at the back of the queue.
Though judging from Thorpe’s untamed delight on Nine’s commentary at his successors’ exploits in the pool, to Meares’ tears of joy reflecting on the Games that were, to Trickett going absolutely nuts on 2GB calling Cam McEvoy’s 50m freestyle gold medal swim, it’s safe to say none of them seem to mind all that much.