Day 14 - Hooker Reaches For The Stars

Major Highlight - Men's Pole Vault

In one of the upsets of the games of the 29th Olympiad Steve Hooker won Australia's first gold medal in the field in 60 years with a heart-stopping victory in the Men's Pole Vault. In a jump for jump battle with Russian Evgeny Lukyanenko, who took the silver, Hooker left it to his third and final jump at heights of 5.80 and 5.85 to tie the Russian and send the jumpers to a height of 5.90. Neither jumper cleared the height at their first two attempts. At his third try Lukyanenko only just brushed the bar with his chest on the way down - but the pole bobbled in its holdings before falling to the ground. That gave Hooker the chance to steal the gold with his final attempt - and after switching to a longer pole he did just that with a magnificent jump that sent the crowd into raptures. Hooker hugged his coach on the track and celebrated in front of the rest of the Aussie team before returning to the runway - his new target, an Olympic record of 5.96. Again he missed with his first two attempts but produced another miracle to take the record and end the competition on a high.

Gold - Steve Hooker (Australia)
Silver - Evgeny Lukyanenko (Russia)
Bronze - Denys Yurchenko (Ukraine)

Athletics
Usain Bolt capped arguably the greatest track performance at a games since Jesse Owens at Berlin (1936) when he helped the Jamaican Men break the long standing world record of the United States in taking gold in the Men's 4 x 100m relay. The Women could not make it a double for the Caribbean nation after stuffing up a baton change. That left the Russian women to take the gold in the 4 x 100 for the first time in their history. Australia's Jared Tallent became the first Aussie male to win two medals at the one Olympics for over 80 years after taking silver in the Men's 50k walk, to go with his bronze in the 20k walk.

Kayaking
Australia added two bronze to their medal tally on the first day of finals at the flat water Kayaking. Ken Wallace came from 8th with 250m to go in the Men's K1 1000 to storm home for Bronze, while the Aussie women also took bronze in the K4 500.

BMX
Both Aussie's missed the medals in the inaugural BMX finals after crashing out in the Men's and Women's one-off finals respectively.

Medal Tally after Day 14:

1 - China - 47-17-25 (89)
2 - United States - 31-36-35 (102)
3 - Great Britain - 18-13-13 (44)

6 - Australia - 12-14-16 (42)