MEDALS HAUL: The Paris Dossier – Day 6

Two sets of rowing sisters – as in actual siblings – won two Olympic medals in the space of half an hour, on an unforgettable day when New Zealand plundered gold, silver and bronze on the water in Paris.
And the rowing world applauds the new Olympic double sculls champions, Brooke Francis and Lucy Spoors, for also helping to pave the way for other “super mums” to return to the highest level of their sport, then win gold.
It’s hard to know what meant more to Lucy Spoors on the waterways of Vaires-sur-Marne on Thursday morning in Paris.
Winning an Olympic gold medal with fellow mum, Brooke Francis, after two years of hard graft – early morning trainings on Lake Karapiro on the back of broken sleep. Screaming as her sister, Phoebe Spoors, won “her own piece of hardware” – an Olympic bronze – with the Kiwi women’s four. Or running to her 20-month-old son, Rupert, in the grandstands and giving him a quick cuddle before being whisked off to do the duties of an Olympic champion.
All three of those special moments will most likely roll into one for Spoors.
It was a “stroke of luck” that she and Francis ended up in a boat together after becoming mums for the first time, she told LockerRoom a year ago. Now, audaciously, they’ve beaten the reigning Olympic and world champions, Romania’s Ancuta Bodnar and Simona Radis, in the Olympic double sculls final – the first race they’ve actually won “since having kids”.
And they’ve inspired other female rowers to follow them.
The pair have had a lot of messages from their competitors, Spoors said, “that aren’t mums who say ‘We really respect what you’re doing and we want to say thanks – we haven’t seen it done much in our sport’,” an emotional Spoors said after the race. In fact, Spoors and Francis are the first Kiwi rowers helped back into an elite boat after having starting families.

The two women, silver medallists in separate boats in Tokyo, had dreamed of winning gold ever since they joined forces.
“Rowing is too hard to not have the big dream. The training was too tough to commit to that without having something that was driving us every day,” Spoors said. “When it looked like we weren’t going to be here, we were getting a lot of fifths… it’s been a lot of underlying belief.”
“Silver in Tokyo was special, but gold is something else,” said Francis, nee Donoghue, who won silver in the same boat (with Hannah Osborne) three years ago. She also grabbed a hug with her almost two-year-old daughter, Keira, in the stands. “That our kids get to see this legacy now is so special. They’re probably looking forward to having their mums back.”
In the same event in which the Evers-Swindell sisters won gold in 2004 and 2008, the Kiwis were fourth after the first quarter of the 2000m race, but picked off their rivals one by one, until they stole the lead from the Romanians at 500m to go, and held on to the finish-line as the defending champions surged again. “All we were thinking about was just being brave – and we were brave from the start,” Spoors said.
As the national anthem finished playing, the New Zealand women’s four were on the start-line of their final. Spoors almost lost her voice yelling for her sister and the rest of the crew – experienced sisters Kerri Williams and Jackie Gowler, and Davina Waddy – who dug deep to win bronze by 0.44s in a race-long battle with another Romanian crew.
Phoebe Spoors, a reserve for the eights in Tokyo, said it was “an amazing feeling” and “a good send off” witnessing her sister’s gold as she went to race. “We’re really proud of those girls – they’re such a force together and they’ve really pushed us in our daily standards,” said the younger Spoors.
Ahead of them, the Netherlands and Great Britain were in their own neck-and-neck race; British mother-of-three Helen Glover narrowly missing out on her third career gold. The Kiwis weren’t perturbed by what was going on ahead – simply thrilled to produce a “rare” sprint at the finish and end up on the podium.
Soon after, the women watched the New Zealand men’s four storm to silver – to complete a rainbow of medals on a special day in Kiwi Olympic history.
“It was never mentioned in previous interviews, but I promised him before that I would stand on the top podium, and today I did it”
– Chinese racewalker Yang Jiayu after winning the 20km gold medal, nine years after the death of her father; in Toyko, the world record holder was in medal contention until she incurred a penalty late in the race.
It may take “the perfect race” for Emma Twigg to win back-to-back Olympic gold in the single sculls final on Saturday night, but she’s proving she has the pace after winning her semifinal in commanding fashion.
Twigg led from start to finish, unruffled by the chasing Lithuanian and American rowers. But even more impressive was her time on the course, 7m 17.19s “with a nice tailwind” – four seconds faster than world champion and favourite, Dutch sculler Karolien Florijn, who won the other semi.
“It’s another step forward,” she told Sky Sport after qualifying for her fourth Olympic final. “The big one to come and I’m feeling good and feeling like every race I’m getting better. So, going well.
“I think it’s going to take the perfect race. I’ve got some amazing competition… everyone’s going to put everything into it, and I’m just happy to be there, really. Fifth Olympics and in a final – perfect.” Her two-year-old son, Tommy, was in the Olympics stands for the first time, with Twigg’s wife, Charlotte.
The NZ 4x200m freestyle relay team – of Erika Fairweather Caitlin Deans, Laticia Transom and Eve Thomas – swam their way into the final, as the eighth-fastest qualifiers. And that’s the position they held in a final dominated by the Australians, who broke the Olympic record with Ariarne Titmus firing in the final leg.
The bad news for the women’s 49erFX crew of Jo Aleh and Molly Meech was a lack of wind postponing their double-points medal race; the good news is the seventh-placed Kiwis get to try again on Day 7. Others were more fortunate finding a breeze: Foiling boardsailor Veerle ten Have sits in ninth after 13 races, while Greta Pilkington in the single-handed dinghy made her Olympic debut and was 21st in the opening race.
Young BMX debutant Leila Walker made a great start, with a third in her opening race, but a sixth and eighth left her in 17th overall. Facing the last chance race, she came home last rider, ending her Olympic experience.
Twelve years after her last Olympics, judoka Moira Koster‘s Paris Games were over after her first match, losing 10-0 in her 78kg round of 32 to Marie Branser of Guinea. The double Commonwealth Games medallist – competing 12 weeks after a full ACL rupture – was upset a judge’s decision cost her the match.

Drone-gate still has wings.
Despite a six-point penalty for spying on New Zealand’s Football Ferns, Canada moved through to the football quarterfinals after winning all three of their pool games.
Canada appealed the penalty, but a bombshell report released by the Court of Arbitration for Sport overnight raised suspicion the spy operation could stretch back to the beginning of Beverly Priestman’s reign as coach in 2020.
There’s now a push to strip Canada of their Tokyo gold medal won in 2021, with Priestman alleged to have written in an email that “spying” is something her analyst “has always done.”
If the Canadians lose their gold, it could upgrade the Matildas to the bronze medal position – which would make Australia feel much better after their celebrated women’s footballers were shockingly eliminated from these Olympics, losing two of their three pool games.   
In March 2003, the IOC ruled an entire team can be stripped of medals based on the infractions of a single team member.
From November 1905 to the end of the 2022 Winter Olympics, there have been 159 Olympic medals stripped and nine declared vacant. Men have had 87 stripped, and females 72. With 46 medals stripped, Russia leads the infamous list of 38 countries to have lost a medal.
After the 2012 London Olympics, Dame Valerie Adams was elevated to gold in the shot put when Nadzeya Ostapchuk from Belarus failed a drug test. When Ostapchuk complained, she was invited into the charity boxing ring by promotors of Fight for Life.
France recently gained a silver medal won by Great Britain in 1900 – when cyclist Lloyd Hildebrand was deemed to be more French than English in a longstanding dispute.
“After a quick turnaround, the Stade de France moves from sevens field to track and field. And on the opening day of the athletics programme, 100m sprinter Zoe Hobbs will make her long-awaited Olympic debut on the purple track, that’s rumoured to be very fast,” says LockerRoom writer and 2012 Olympic heptathlete, Sarah Cowley Ross.
“Hobbs is coming in hot, well prepared and ready for her debut with her family in the stands.
“The 100m is one of the main events of any Olympic Games, so it’s extra special to have a Kiwi sprinter on the start line.
“And keep an eye on Christchurch trampolinist Maddie Davidson, making her second Olympic appearance – hoping to emulate the success of her partner, Dylan Schmidt, who won trampoline bronze in Tokyo.”
The men’s four, of Ollie Maclean, Logan Ullrich, Tom Murray and Matt Macdonald, rowed a powerful race to win silver behind the United States. Tom Mackintosh is through to the final of the men’s single sculls, after finishing second in his semifinal. Lewis Clareburt will line up in the semis of the 200m individual medley (but missed out on a place in the final), and Ryan Fox is tied for six, after a first round 67 (four under), in the men’s golf.
The Black Sticks tournament came to a brutal end with a 5-0 drubbing from the Australians, leaving the New Zealanders winless in Paris, and Finn Butcher missed out on the K1 slalom final after copping 56 penalty seconds in his semi.
Judo: Sydnee Andrews, +78kg round of 64, 8pm, semifinal 2am, final 3am
Athletics: Zoe Hobbs, 100m preliminaries, 8.35 pm, heats, 9.50 pm        
Swimming: Eve Thomas, Erika Fairweather, 800m freestyle heats, 9pm
Gymnastics : Madaline Davidson, trampoline individual qualification, 10pm; final 11.50pm
Sailing: Jo Aleh and Molly Meech, 49erFX medal race, 10.15pm; Greta Pilkington, one-person dinghy, races 3-4, 10.15 pm; Veerle ten Have, foil quarterfinals, 12am, semifinal, 12.15am, final, 12.30am
Rowing: Jackie Kiddle, Shannon Cox, lightweight double scull, 10.22pm
Canoe/Kayak: Luuka Jones, kayak cross time trial, 2.40am
Cycling: Leila Walker, BMX individual, semifinal, 6.15am, final, 7.50am
To see the full schedule of when New Zealand athletes are competing on Sky Sport, go to https://www.sky.co.nz/discover/sky-sport/olympics#schedule
To watch in New Zealand go to Sky Sport, stream on Sky Sport Now, or watch free-to-air on Sky Open (Freeview Channel 15 or stream free via Sky Go).