East Gippsland sports stars Paige Barr and Aislin Jones have both represented Australian with distinction at the Paris Olympic Games over the past week.
The Olympics are the pinnacle of the sporting world, where the best of the best take on each other every four years, with only one Olympic champion crowned.
Barr was in the important stroke seat for Australia in the women’s eight rowing event that was decided on Saturday night.
It was 23-year-old Barr’s first Olympic campaign after recent gold medal success at World Cup level in the eights.
Despite finishing strongly, the Rosellas could only finish fourth, just over a second behind Great Britain, who took home the bronze medal.
The event was won by an outstanding crew from Romania, who held off a determined team from Canada in a fast and exciting finale.
Earlier in the meet Australia finished second in their heat behind Great Britain before making its way through to the finals via the repechage round.
Australia boasted one the youngest crews and their best performances are still ahead of them.
Jones contested the women’s skeet and mixed pairs event in her second Olympic games after debuting as a 16-year-old in 2016 at Rio.
Jones began her campaign shooting 67 from 75 targets from her three rounds last Friday. She backed up the next day with 45 from 50, finishing with a final score of 112, claiming a respectable 25th place.
The cut off for the medal shoot off was 120, with the gold medal won by Chile’s Francisca Crovetto Chadid who finished narrowly ahead of Jones’ good friend, Amy Rutter, who recently gave birth to her first child. America’s Austen Jewell Smith finished in the bronze medal spot.
Jones and Olympic debutante, Joshua Bell, finished in 11th place in the mixed team’s event on Monday.
The mixed team’s event is a new event at Olympic level, an event that Bell and Jones recently won a bronze medal at World Cup level in Baku.
The Australians finished with a competition total of 141, after being in the mix after the opening rounds.
The cut off for the medal rounds was 146, with Italy taking gold, America silver and China bronze.
Despite coming home without a medal, both Jones and Barr have done East Gippsland proud and we look forward to following both their careers as they chase Olympic gold in the years to come.
