2024 Paris Olympic Games day 12: Five things you missed while you were sleeping

An absolute gold rush and one big brainsnap headline day 12 of competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Here are five things you missed while you were sleeping.

An absolute gold rush and one big brainsnap headline day 12 of competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Here are five things you missed while you were sleeping.

Hard Wearn’d first! Sailing gold for Australia

Matt Wearn has extended one of sailing’s most extraordinary winning runs by claiming Australia’s fourth straight gold medal on a bizarre day of racing involving a general recall, re-starts, a shortened course, a race abandonment and almost two full races before the ILCA 7 medals were decided on the Bay of Marseille.

The win came after the first race of the day was abandoned just minutes from gold being decided and after Wearn had won an extraordinary tacking duel with his major rival for gold, Pavlos Kontides from Cyprus.

A visibly frustrated Wearn - who needed to finish in the top seven if Kontides won - managed to re-compose himself as race officials pulled anchor in search of new and better breeze in the hope of restarting the medal race.

Less than an hour later another race was started with Wearn again replicating his tactics of covering the Cypriot before winning the finale to take the gold.

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Keegan Palmer blitzes skateboarding final to take gold

A few months ago Keegan Palmer was sore and stressed and haunted by the fear that his Paris push was in ruins.

Now he stands as a skateboarding legend after leaving the pain and soaring anxiety levels behind him to win his second gold medal in as many Olympics.

And he did it in a field “10 times’’ stronger than the one he beat in Tokyo.

Palmer gave Australia its second skateboarding gold in as many days - after Arisa Trew’s win in the women’s park final - when he outclassed a stellar field at La Concorde.

Australia’s new Awesome Foursome cycling team

Three years after crashing in Tokyo, Australia’s pursuit team has won gold in Paris.

And they’ve done it by lowering the flag of arch-rivals Great Britain.

Australia’s new “Awesome Foursome” of Oliver Bleddyn, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien are also the new kings of track cycling.

Overcome with elation, the four riders embraced and pumped their fist in the surreal realisation that they are Olympic champions.

Out-foxing, out-smarting and ultimately out-gunning the Brits, the Aussie boys roared around the 4km distance of the National Velodrome in a time of 3.42.067.

Coke-aburra’s walk fo shame after release

Australian men’s hockey player Tom Craig has been released from a Paris holding cell with a warning after being arrested for buying cocaine on Tuesday night.

Craig received no fine and no criminal record as a result of the arrest that took some of the gloss off our stunning Olympics campaign.

The 28-year-old Kookaburras striker had left a team function on Tuesday night and then only 15 minutes later was caught by police buying cocaine off a dealer.

The dealer had 75 ecstasy pills and seven vials of cocaine and was also arrested, with Craig understood to have bought a gram of cocaine. Both men remain in police custody.

Opals overcome Boomers curse to progress

Australia’s resurgent Opals will need to pull off the greatest Olympic boilover in history to beat a Team USA women’s side which is more dominant than their high profile men’s Dream Team.

The American women are riding a 58-game Olympic win streak dating back 28 years – and are shooting for an eighth straight gold medal in Paris.

But Australia’s stars say they will relish the chance to “topple a dynasty” after being pitched into a likely semi-final clash against a Team USA side that still needs to beat Nigeria in a quarter-final to progress.

An Opals side featuring six WNBA regulars have declared they are not “scared” of the most dominant American basketball team in Olympic history.

Earlier, the Australians kept Lauren Jackson’s fairytale farewell tour alive with a commanding 85-67 win over Serbia.

Originally published as 2024 Paris Olympic Games day 12: Five things you missed while you were sleeping