Narrabri’s Olympic duo in action tonight

The sportiest town in Australia will be represented on the grandest stage of them all in two sports tonight as Narrabri Olympians Laura Gourley and Shannan Davey prepare to compete at the 2024 Paris Games.

Laura has already raced twice for the Australian rowing quadruple sculls team and will compete for the third time tonight.

The 22-year-old and her teammates Ria Thompson, Rowena Meredith, and Caitlin Cronin lined up in heat one on Saturday and finished fifth in a field of five. The Netherlands won the 2000-metre race with a time of 6:17.12 to progress straight through to the A final along with Ukraine, who finished second with a time of 6:20.09. China (6:22.29), Romania (6:24.74) and the Aussies (6:25.88) finished third, fourth and fifth, respectively, to all go through to the repechage race.

Heat two saw Great Britain (6:13.15) and Germany (6:15.28) advance to the A final, and Switzerland (6:16.91) and the United States (6:27.35) fall into the repechage race.

The repechage was contested on Monday and teams were required to row their way to a top-two finish to reach the A final. Gourley and her Aussie teammates placed third and missed out on a spot in the medal race by just four seconds.

They will line up in the B final against Romania and the United States tonight, just after 8.10pm AEST, and the A final will get underway just after 8.30pm.

Shannan will step into the ring for the first time tonight when the 24-year-old challenges Rami Mofid Kiwan in the round of 16. It is expected to be a tough fight after the Bulgarian defeated Poland’s Damian Durkac by 5-0 judges’ votes (29:26, 29:26, 30:25, 30:25, 29:26) in his round of 32 bout on Sunday.

If Shannan wins against Kiwan, his next fight will be in the quarter-final on Sunday.

It has been a sensational start to the 2024 Paris Games for the Australian Olympic team as a whole. As of Wednesday at 4pm AEST, the Aussies were third on the medal tally with six gold medals, four silver medals and one bronze medal behind Japan (7-2-4) and China (6-6-2). The hosts were sitting fourth (5-9-4).