Well it’s the first Tuesday of August, there’s under a week remaining for the Tokyo Olympics and my main note of the day comes from the Equestrian finals on Monday night.

Prior to the events of August 2, when Australia won Silver in the Team Eventing and the ageless wonder Andrew Hoy, in his 8th Olympic Games, buttered up and won Bronze in the Individual event, the 62-year-old Hoy had last won an Olympic medal on September 22, 2000, when he won his third consecutive Gold medal in the Team Eventing and won Silver in the Individual Eventing in Sydney.

To give you a bit more context, when Hoy won those medals in Sydney, Ariarne Titmus was 15 days old, and Kaylee McKeown hadn’t been born.

Both of them are now multiple Gold Medalists, and not only is Hoy the oldest Australian to ever win an Olympic medal, he’s now level with American J.Michael Plumb, who himself holds the American record for most Olympic appearances, and the great Kiwi rider Sir Mark Todd, for the most medals in the history of Equestrian riding at the Olympic Games with 6 overall.

The funny part – The 3 of them competed against each other at Los Angeles in 1984, which was Hoy’s first Olympic appearance, and Barcelona in 1992, which was Plumb’s final Olympic appearance.

30 years to the day since Allen Jakovich pulled off the rare Scissor Kick goal for Melbourne, one of his 11 goals that day at the MCG

For context, the Scissor kick was Jacko’s 8th goal of the day, his 11 goals were the most by a Melbourne player since Fred Fanning kicked the league record 18 goals against St Kilda in 1947, and the Scissor Kick was so spontaneous that the camerman almost didn’t capture it:

And in case you’re wondering, that is indeed the MCG – The old Southern Stand was knocked down at the end of 1990, and the present Great Southern Stand was rebuilt during the 1991 season, which necessitated that year’s Grand Final at Waverley Park, and was completed in time for the 1992 Cricket World Cup.

This week also marked 40 years since Rick Springfield and Jessie’s Girl first hit No.1 in the United States

A few facts – It was actually released in February of 1981, but after taking 19 weeks to gather steam in America, it finally hit No.1 on the Billboard charts on August 1, 1981 – The very same day that MTV launched!

Jessie’s Girl overtook The One That You Love by fellow Australian artist Air Supply, and stayed there until August 15, when it was toppled by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie’s highly successful duet of Endless Love.

“And here we see the grid for the 2005 United States Grand Prix, as all the Michelin-shod runners peel in to the pit lane”

In recognition of Peter Bol becoming the first Australian since Ralph Doubell in 1968 (When he won Gold) to reach the 800m final, we’ve made a few changes Down Under

We no longer eat out of bowls, we eat out of Bols.

All Australian rules umpires are required to pay Holding the Bol.

BasketBol has taken off here in Peter’s old stomping ground of Perth.

And we’re no longer playing Lawn Bowls in Australia….

WE PLAY LAWN BOLS.

What’s Emma McKeon’s favourite genre of music?

…..

……

Heavy Metal.

It’s worth noting Australia was projected to win between 15-16 Gold Medals prior to the beginning of the Tokyo Games, so we’re pretty much smack bang on target

If Matthew Belcher and Will Ryan get through tomorrow’s Medal Race for the 470 class of Sailing without any penalties, then Australia will be up to 15 Gold Medals, which would then surpass Beijing 2008 and constitute our third-best showing at an Olympic Games in human history, just behind Sydney 2000 (16 Gold) and Athens 2004, with 17 Gold Medals.

Obviously pretty much every water-based sport is finishing up, Peter Bol will have to invoke the spirit of Ralph Doubell and Herb Elliott in the 800m final, so you’d have to think the most realistic chance of any Australian winning a 16th Gold and tying Sydney is either Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar in the Women’s Beach Volleyball after they knocked out the World No.1 pair, or the Kookaburras in the Gold Medal Match of the Men’s Hockey against World No.2 Belgium on Thursday night, and with the Kookas’ cursed history, you wouldn’t pick them to win a Gold Medal until they actually won it, and although Boomers won bloody well against Argentina this evening, they do have to come up against the United States in the Semi Final of the Basketball, and naturally every team in the world is an underdog against the USA in basketball, regardless of the fact that the Boomers won their last game against them.

And as for finishing ahead of the Poms in the Gold count, we should face reality and accept it’s almost positively probably not going to happen, so for now, what I’d love to see is our plucky gigantic country of 25.4 million people with questionable levels of public funding for sports finishing ahead of the continental European powerhouses like France, Germany and Italy with double our population, so we can tell them that they can’t Surf, Swim or play Hockey for crap.

Apparently the French are good at climbing rock walls, the Germans are good with horses and the Italians can run, though.

Another statistic to show how utterly awe inspiring that 400m Hurdles Final was

It should deservedly sit alongside Michael Johnson’s 200m final in Atlanta and Usain Bolt’s 100m final in Beijing, and meanwhile, Rai Benjamin could be the unluckiest athlete at the entire games….

Breaks the old 400m Hurdles world record by HALF A SECOND, and he still has to be content with a Silver medal.

Harry Garside is guaranteed of a medal in the Men’s 57-63kg Boxing!

I thought he was bloody lucky to get the decision from the judges (3-2 the way of Garside) because Zakir Safiullin, the Kazakh from Kazakhstan looked like he had the better of that final round, and it is boxing at the Olympics so you never know how many of the judges were given brown paper bags, but nevertheless, it’ll be the first medal of any kind by an Australian in Boxing at the Summer Olympics since Graeme Cheney won Silver in the Light Welterweight division at Seoul in 1988.

Fun fact – That medal by Cheney is also the only Boxing medal for an Australian in the last 60 years!

Buzz Rothfield talking about the Sydney Roosters “Pooing in corridors” before Trent Robinson was hired as coach in 2013

Yes, Buzz genuinely mentioned pooing on Fox League:

If you’re wondering who Buzz is talking about in regards to pooing in corridors, it was an incident in 2009 when Nate Myles had a poorly timed bout of diarrhoea after a night out and had to take a crap in the corridor of the Crowne Plaza Terrigal in the early hours of the morning, in scenes reminiscent of Julian O’Neill and the ‘Poo in the Shoe’ incident in 1999.

It’s fitting that Buzz would bring up Pooing in corridors, because the Roosters themselves resembled a giant turd on field in 2009 when they won the Wooden Spoon.

The scenes if Melbourne hosts an NRL Grand Final before Brisbane does

I imagine this would be Melbourne Storm CEO Matt Tripp’s reaction:

And this would be every Queenslander’s reaction at the fact that Lang Park, a purpose built rectangular stadium with an atmosphere like a cauldron missed out on a once in a lifetime chance:

The planned Optus Stadium Halo viewing deck that’ll come to life in 2022

It’ll be a great place for those really wealthy West Coast fans to watch the Eagles slide further and further into a rebuild.

And finally, a reminder that this happened