Day 6 - Rice Leads Aussie Girls To Relay Gold

Major Highlight - Women's 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay

On a morning that had been disappointing for the Aussie's in the pool, Australia's Women's 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay team produced a performance for the ages to hold off superpowers the US and China and take the gold medal in world record time. The Aussie team of Stephanie Rice, Bronte Barrat, Kylie Palmer, and Linda Mackenzie shaved over 5 seconds off the world mark to deliver Australia's 5th (and Rice's third!) gold at Beijing so far. Each girl produced a phenomenal splits, with Rice equalling the Australian 200m Freestyle record with her lead off leg. Barrat and Palmer managed to build up a three second lead heading into the last leg where Mackenzie was able to hold off the likes of world record holder Federica Pellegrini (Italy) and Katie Hoff (US) to take the race. The gold medal is redemption for Mackenzie who was part of the Australian relay team that were heartbreakingly robbed of a gold medal in this very race when they were disqualified for jumping into the pool before all participants had finished in the Fukuoka world championships in 2001.

Gold - Australia
Silver - China
Bronze - US

Swimming
Australia suffered a disappointing day in the pool outside the relay. World-record holder Eamon Sullivan was touched out by French rival Alain Bernard in the Men's 100m Freestyle final, while Jess Schipper went down to two remarkably improved Chinese swimmers in the final of the Women's 200m Butterfly. Both Chinese girls broke Schipper's previous world record mark in a performance that raises a lot of questions over the girls rapid improvement. On a brighter note, Brenton Rickard became the first Aussie to win a medal in the Men's 200m Breastroke since Los Angeles (1984), when he took silver behind superstar Kosuke Kitajima (Japan). The biggest shock of the day came from Libby Trickett (Australia), the world record holder in the Women's 100m Freestyle. Trickett had looked like missing the final after being only the 9th fastest qualifier from the semi-finals. But the fastest qualifier, China's Pang Jiayang was disqualified for a false start in the second-semi to allow Trickett to sneak into the field. Trickett will now be looking for a Keirien Perkins type performance to win from lane 8 in today's final.

Hockey
The Hockeyroo's continued their unbeaten run at this years games with a comprehensive 3-0 victory over South Africa.

Judo
Mongolia broke their long-awaited gold medal drought when Tuvshinbayar Naidan won the Men's 100kg class. Mongolia previously held the record for most minor medals (17) without having won a gold. That record now passes to the Philippines who have 9 minor medals (2 silver, 7 bronze) with no gold to their credit. Photo c/o http://www.olympics.com/

Basketball
The Boomers got their first win of this years games with a dominant 106-68 win over Iran.

Water Polo
The Australian men's team kept their hold on the fourth and final qualifying spot in their pool after a come from behind 8-5 victory over Canada.

Tennis
Lleyton Hewitt and Chris Guccione (Australia) have been knocked out of the Men's Doubles after going down 6-4 6-4 to the Bryan brothers of the US. Australia's participation in the tennis is over after the Women's doubles team also went down to Spain.

Medal Tally after day 6:

1 - China - 22-8-5 (35)
2 - USA - 10-9-15 (34)
3 - Germany - 7-2-3 (12)

6 - Australia 5-4-7 (16)

Channel 7 Bullshitmetre - As if we hadn't seen enough replays of the swimming finals, Channel 7 decided as an added feature we could all sit and watch poor Stephanie Rice watch her gold medal winning performances while being filmed by the Channel 7 cameras. Awkward! I think Rice summed it up perfectly with her comments at the start of the replay of the 400m IM. 'Are we going to watch the whole race?'