Australia’s women’s match racing sailing crew, which is skippered by University of Sydney athlete Olivia Price, have won their quarter-final clash against the Netherlands to remain on track for gold.
Overnight SUSF EAP scholarship holder Price and her crew of Nina Curtis and Lucinda Whitty went into the third match of the quarterfinal locked at one-all with the Netherlands.
The Australian trio has been the team to beat all competition, winning all 11 round robin matches to be the top seed.
They took the next two wins to catapult them into a semi-final against Finland on Friday.
“We’re happy with our day, we raced hard and came away with two wins,” Price told Yachting Australia.
“Both races were very close, the first one was quite interesting with a couple of penalties, they’re our training partner and we know them quite well. They were always going to be hard fought races.”
“We know each other’s in and outs and we know how each other is feeling in different situations, we were always going to have to fight hard for that race,” she said.
Price said that they’ll enjoy a day off before refocusing on Friday’s semi-final.
“We don’t change anything,” she said.
“We’re going into it sticking to our system and going out to win races.”
University of Sydney’s Thomas Whalan and Sam McGregor and the Sharks have fallen just short of pulling off their biggest upset and a first-ever Olympic semi-final berth with an 11-8 loss to Serbia.
The Australian men’s water polo led at every change of their London Games quarter-final against the Beijing bronze medallists, but weren’t able to withstand a Serbian comeback that resulted in five unanswered goals in the fourth quarter.
Having never beaten Serbia at major tournament, the Australians recovered from a slow start to score five straight goals for a 5-2 lead.
They maintained the three-goal advantage to halftime and led 8-6 going into the last period before their offence stalled – Australia unable to get in any decent scoring position over the closing minutes.
SUSF EAP scholarship holder Thomas Whalan admitted his side had struggled to handle the Serbs when they lifted in the final quarter.
“The emotions in sport are the absolute highest of highs and lowest of lows and I experienced two of those today,” Whalan told Ninemsn.
“I’ve got a smile on my face because I think we really – at least for three quarters – showed what the Australian team could do and that’s match the best team in the world.
“Unfortunately water polo’s four quarters and we lost momentum and they stepped up.
“They scored some very big goals and we didn’t stop them. Simple as that.”
Australia will now play in the classification group as they attempt to match their best Olympic Games finish of fifth which they achieved at two Olympics – 1984 and 1992.
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Friday 10 August
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