Australian sailors qualified four boat classes for the Paris Olympics after wins at Sail Sydney and Chloe Covell’s fourth place at the Street Skateboarding World Championships highlights the weekend in Olympic sports.
Sailing – Four quota spots earned at Sail Sydney
Sailors took on the Sydney Harbour at the 2023 Sail Sydney regatta, with the chance to secure additional quota spots for next year’s Olympic Games.
Nia Jerwood and Conor Nicholas in the mixed 470 team and Brin Liddell and Rhiannon Brown of the Nacra 17 team secured quota positions for Australia for Paris 2024.
On the final day of Sail Sydney, Australia secured two more Paris 2024 quota spots; Jim Colley and Shaun Connor in the 49er team and Samantha Costin in the women’s iQ FOiL.
The Australian Sailing Team has now secured nine out of the 10 possible Paris 2024 quota spots for Australia.
Skateboarding – Street – Chloe Covell closes 2023 with 4th at World Championships
Chloe Covell finished an outstanding year with fourth in the women’s street skateboarding final at the World Championships in Tokyo.
She qualified as the top athlete to enter the final, with Chloe’s final score of 245.11 marginally short of the bronze medallist and Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion Nishya Momiji (JPN) on 245.76.
Japan's Oda Yumeka became world champion with 265.75 and defending champion Rayssa Leal (BRA) was second with 261.90.
Watch the final on demand here.
Fourth place for Chloe brings with it valuable Paris 2024 qualifying points. Flic Turner (23rd) and Liv Lovelace (29th) also made the quarter-finals, while in the men's competition Shane O'Neill (30th) and Daniel Woolley (32nd) qualified for the quarter-finals.
Water Polo – Aussie Sharks go down in penalty shootout against Greece
Currently on their European Tour, the Aussie Sharks took on the Greek men’s water polo team in a test match over the weekend.
The close game sent both teams into a head-to-head penalty shootout, where the Sharks unfortunately missed out on the win by 1 goal, going down to Greece 17-18.
Athletics – Dubler takes Queensland title in decathlon
Tokyo 2020 decathletes Cedric Dubler and Ash Moloney put in strong performances at the Queensland Combined Event Championships.
Cedric put up the third best total of his career, with his 8334 points taking out gold in the event,, and featured a personal-best result in the long jump (7.90m). The total was just shy of the Paris 2024 qualification standard, but Cedric said he was happy to post his third best result at the season opening event. Ash also set a long jump personal best of 7.77m, before unfortunately sucumbing to injury after five events.
Read more here.
