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Jake Michaels, Senior Editor
PARIS – Tom Green and Jean van der Westhuyzen narrowly missed adding another gold medal to Australia’s Olympic tally, having to settle for bronze in the men’s K2 500m.
The Australian duo won the K2 1000m in Tokyo three years ago, their first race together on the international stage, but this discipline was replaced by the half distance in the Paris program.
Green and van der Westhuyzen had proven themselves to be the best of the field in their semi-final at the Stade Nautique de Vaires-sur-Marne earlier that day, breaking a 20-year-old Olympic record with a time of 1:26.85.
That time would have won them gold in the final on Friday afternoon. Instead, they finished in third place with a time of 1:27.29, 0.42 seconds behind the German pair Max Lemke and Jacob Schopf, who took gold, and 0.14 seconds behind the Hungarian boat of Sandor Totka and Bence Nadas.
READ: Who won Australia’s gold medals in Paris?
“Winning an Olympic medal is something very special, so we are very happy about it, but of course we are also disappointed,” said van der Westhuyzen. “We really thought we could win a gold medal, but all the teams on the starting line also believe they are capable of doing so.”
“We would have loved to come here and get the gold again, but we will live and fight another day and coming home with the dirty gold is not so bad.”
Despite missing out on the gold medal, Australia remains third in the Paris medal count with 18 gold, 14 silver and 14 bronze medals. Hosts France and Great Britain are fourth and fifth respectively with 14 gold medals. Japan and South Korea each have 13.
