Olympian Aoife Coughlan has joined rare air in taking out a judo Grand Prix in Europe, while an Aussie wildcard doubles pairing at the Australian Open has gone undefeated for the second-straight year to highlight the weekend in sport. Cover image courtesy of Judo Australia.
Judo
Tokyo 2020 judoka Aoife Coughlan has reached new heights in winning gold at the Portugal Grand Prix in the women’s -70kg division, her first ever Grand Prix gold medal.
She’s just the second Aussie ever to win gold at a Grand Prix. She beat a 12-time Grand Prix medallist, Venezuelan Elvismar Rodriguez, in the gold medal contest.
Tennis
For the second consecutive year an Aussie pair have taken out the men’s doubles at the Australian Open, with wildcards Jason Kubler and Rinky Hijikata winning their first Grand Slam title on Rod Laver Arena on Saturday night.
Rinky, a 2018 Youth Olympics doubles silver medallist, and Jason defeated Jan Zielinski (POL) and Hugo Nys (MON) 6-4 7-6 in 83 minutes.
Not since 1982-83 have an all-Aussie pairing won the men’s doubles in back-to-back years, when John Alexander/John Fitzgerald and Mark Edmondson/Paul McNamee did it respectively. Last year Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis won the men’s doubles at Melbourne Park, who were also wildcards.
Hockey
A seven-minute surge from the Netherlands in the bronze medal match at the men’s Hockey World Cup has consigned the Kookaburras to a fourth place in India on Sunday night.
The Kookaburras scored first through Jeremy Hayward, who collected his 100th international goal in his 200th Kookaburras appearance, which was followed up by three second-half goals to the Netherlands for the final 3-1 scoreline. The occasion also marked Jake Harvie’s 100th for Australia.
It came after the Aussie men had a heartbreaking 4-3 loss in the semi-finals on Friday night to Germany. Blake Govers gave the Kookaburras a 3-2 lead with two minutes to go, but Germany staged a remarkable fightback to equalise in the 59th minute and then scored the winner with six seconds left on the clock.
Jeremy finished the World Cup as the overall leading goal scorer and was named defender of the tournament.
“You never want to lose games…it was a medal match and we walk away with nothing now, so it’s disappointing,” Jeremy said.
“There are a lot of things we can take away from this tournament, both negative and positive, so we’ll come together, reflect on it and bounce back.”
“We put in the hard work over summer so now we’ll go back to Perth, rest and recover and look to improve for the Pro League.”
“I’m proud to get 100 goals…there wouldn’t be too many in that club for Australia. I’m pretty happy to joint that club but in the end it’s bittersweet.”
The Kookaburras next play in the FIH Pro League against Argentina and Spain in Hobart from 28 February – 5 March.
Snowboard – Halfpipe and Slopestyle
Scotty James entered the X Games superpipe event in Aspen, Colorado as defending champion and took out the event for a fifth time.
Valentino Guseli and Tess Coady also won their maiden medals at the X Games in an amazing showing for Australia. Tess landed silver in the women’s slopestyle, after winning bronze in the same event at Beijing 2022. While Valentino shared the podium with Scotty in receiving the men’s superpipe bronze medal.
Monobob
Bree Walker has finished fourth at the IBSF Monobob World Championships in St Mortiz, Switzerland, the best result by an Australian ever at the world champs.
By the end of the competition the top four were bunched together, all separated by less than a second.
Laura Nolte (GER) won gold with a time of 4:44.85, Kaillie Humphries (USA) claimed silver (4:45.25) and Lisa Buckwitz (GER) secured bronze (4:45.57). Bree’s time of 4:45.77 meant she missed out on a podium finish by two tenths of a second.
Fencing
24-year-old Lachie Crook from Queensland has achieved Australia’s best epee result in nearly 10 years, finishing 22nd at the Doha Grand Prix in a field of 241 athletes.
He won all six of his pool matches to take great form into the round of 64.
Lachie came up against world no.65 in that round and won the contest 15-10.
His round of 32 bout against American Dylan Nollner saw the Queenslander end up on the other side of an identical scoreline, to finish in 22nd place overall.
The epee national squad are scheduled to travel to Heidenheim, Budapest and Buenos Aires throughout February and March for World Cup competition.
Rugby 7s
The women’s and men’s Aussie 7s had their first opportunity to play a World Series round on Australian soil in three years on the weekend, finishing 5th and 7th respectively at Allianz Stadium in Sydney.
After falling 10-5 to France in the quarter-finals, the Aussie women hit back with 19-0 win over Great Britain in the 5th place semi-final and a 36-12 win in the fifth place playoff against Fiji.
In the Fiji win Charlotte Caslick was the standout for the home team, scoring two tries to become the Aussie 7s all-time leading World Series try scorer with 143 career tries – passing Ellia Green’s 142 tries.
It was a similar story in the quarter-finals for the Aussie men’s side. France were standing in their way of making the semi-finals, with the visitors securing another tight 17-14 win over the hosts.
It set up a 5th place semi-final with Samoa and the 2023 Cape Town champions got the better of the Aussies, winning 24-10.
Beach Volleyball
At the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Final Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar have finished in fourth place.
Competing in Doha, they had a date with reigning world champion pair Eduarda Lisboa (BRA) and Ana Patricia Ramos (BRA) in the semi-finals. The Aussies won the first set and were then outclassed in the second and deciding tiebreaker set 21-15, 12-21, 11-15.
In the bronze medal match they came up against the third-seeded Netherlands pairing of Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon and lost 18-21 10-21.
