Sailors set sail for medal push and more action from around Napoli

The sailing team will head into the final day of races on Friday in first place after the qualification seedings of the event were decided on Thursday. Australia shrugged off a delayed start due to a late wind change that required a course re-set to win the first race comfortably before battling through races two and three to finish sixth and fifth respectively. Despite these results, Australia remained in first place with 48 points after 16 races to sit just 3 points clear of Finland who finished with 51 points.

The team will now be pitted in the top 8 grouping of the competition and will battle it out across five races to determine the medals.

Athletics – In a night that belonged to the Italians who won two gold medals, the UniRoos didn’t collect any medals, but are set to launch into the final two days of athletics competition.

Matthew Denny (Griffith University) will look to add another Universiade medal to his collection after leading the way in the discus qualifying with 61.61m. The business student won silver in Gwangju in 2015. The final till take place on Saturday 14 July at 18:25 (02:25 AEST).

Australian Catholic University’s Alysha Burnett easily qualified for the high jump final with 1.80m. Burnett won a silver in the hepthalon in Taipei in 2017, however with both the hepthalon and high jump on the same days in Naples, opted for the high jump only at these Games. The final will take place on Saturday 14 July at 18:00 (02:00 AEST).

Both Jye Perrot (University of Technology Sydney) and Mason Cohen (University of Technology Sydney) qualified for the semifinals of the men’s 800m with Perrot finishing 7th overall in 1:50.77 and Cohen in 13th in 1:51.54.

Both Georgia Griffith (Monash University) and Georgia Hansen (University of Melbourne) advanced to the 1500m final. Griffith finished first in heat two for an automatic qualification in 4:20.76 and Hansen finished sixth in heat one in 4:23.23 (11th overall).

Abbie Taddeo (Australian College of Physical Education) qualified for the 100m hurdles final finishing 4th in her heat and 7th overall in 13.42 in the semifinal. In the final she ran 13.68 to finish in eighth. Italian Luminosa Bogliolo took gold in 12.79.

In the women’s steeplechase, Brianna Ilarda (Providence College, USA) finished 5th in 9:53.23 and Paige Campbell (Charles Stuart University) 7th in 10:03.63.

In the men’s javelin final Liam O’Brien (University of Queensland) also took an eighth-place finish with a distance of 75.04m. Andrian Mardare of Moldova took the gold with 82.40m.

In the heptathlon Tori West (The University of Queensland) currently sits in 7th with 3331 points. She recorded a 30cm PB in the shot-put finishing second with a throw of 13.53m. She will continue tomorrow with the long jump, javelin throw and 800m.

In the 200m semifinal Riley Day (Griffith University) just missed out on qualifying finishing 4th in her heat and 10th overall in 23.56 and Nana Owusu-Afriyie (Deakin University) finished 6th in her heat and 17th overall in 23.85.

Both Nicholas Andrews and Jacob McGory, both of Macquarie University, qualified for the semi-finals of the 110mH. Andrews raced to a PB of 13.76 and McCory’s 14.10 was enough to secure the final spot in the next round.

Finally, Daniel Canala (The Univeirty of Adelaide) progressed to Saturday’s final of the 5,000m finish 3rd in his heat in 14:11.99.

Early on Friday (07:00, 3.00pm AEST) the strong UniRoos women’s walk team toes the line in the 20km event with Commonwealth Games gold medallist Gemma Montag (The University of Melbourne), rising star Katie Hayward (Griffith University) and Philippa Huse (Monash University) joining Declan Tingay (The University of Western Australia) who races the men’s event.

Read the full Athletics Australia report HERE.

Water Polo – The women’s water polo team will play of for 5th place on Friday after defeating China in the 5th place semi-final 12-7. Going into the main break 5-3, Australia opened the floodgates in the third period, scoring 4 goals to 0 to set up the win Alice Williams (University of Technology Sydney) was once again lively scoring three times, while Brooke McClean (Australian Catholic University) also scored three goals.

The women’s team will now play Japan on Friday 12 July at 11:30 CEST (19:39 AEST) with the winner finishing in fifth place overall for the tournament.

The men’s water polo team will play for seventh place at Napoli 2019 after losing 7-3 to France in the 5th place semi-final. After being tied 3-3 at halftime it was anybody’s match after Angus Lambie (UNSW Sydney), Charles Negus (TAFE NSW) and Reilly Townsend (Queensland University of Technology) all put one past the French goalkeeper.

France were able to lift a gear in the second half, putting four more goals on the board while Australia was unable to add to their halftime score.

The team will now play Croatia in the seventh-place playoff on Friday 12 July at 17:30 CEST (1:30 AEST) to wrap up their campaign.

Archery – In the recurve mixed team James Gaze (RMIT University) and Belinda Maxworthy (Macquarie University) fell to France 6-0. And in the compound mixed team of Niamah Jones (The University of Adelaide) and Remy Leonard (The University of Queensland) drew with Kazakhstan, but due to Kazakhstan’s slightly higher ranking of 14 they advanced over Australia’s 19.

Taekwondo – Tayla Nolte (Victoria University) fell to Anel Vaitiare Felix Perez of Mexico 6-0 in her first round match. Chelsea Hobday (Queensland University of Technology) dropped her first match 15-0 to Matea Jelic of Croatia.

Rhythmic Gymnastics – The rhythmic gymnastics team finally got their chance to shine today as the final gymnastics competition of Napoli 2019 kicked off.

The individual all-around got underway with Elizabeth Inaba-Hill (University of South Australia) competing in the hoop and ball apparatuses. Elizabeth performed strongly, finishing 28th in the ball apparatus with a score of 12.850 and 27th in the ball with 13.600.

The group event team of Emily Abbot (TAFE Queensland), Alexandra Eedle (Queensland University of Technology), Alannah Mathews (Queensland University of Technology) and Himeka Onoda (University of Queensland) finished 8th in the ball apparatus with a score of 15.600. The competition will continue Friday before finals take place on Saturday 13 July.