REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Monday, August 13, 2012

THE Gold Coast lived up to its name, with the city’s athletes winning four of Australia’s seven gold medals in London.

The performance of Gold Coast athletes was so dominant that, had the city entered as a country in its own right, it would have beaten the rest of Australia in the medal tally. The Coast’s 44 representatives, either as individuals or part of teams, won four gold, three silver and three bronze, an effort that would have placed the city 18th on the medal tally ahead of the final events.

That was one place below Jamaica, whose magnificent sprinters led by the incomparable Usain Bolt, won four gold, but above Spain and Brazil, host of the 2016 Games.

Sally Pearson’s 100m hurdles victory, fellow Queenslander Anna Meares – who won cycling gold after beating British arch rival Victoria Pendleton – and NSW sailor Tom Slingsby snared Australia’s only individual gold medals.

The other four were won by teams in sailing, swimming and kayaking, with Gold Coasters prominent in three of those.

Three of the four members of the K4 1000m crew are based on the Coast.

The quartet included Northcliffe’s Tate Smith, Burleigh Heads Mowbray Park’s Jacob Clear and Illawarra’s David Smith, who relocated to the Australian Institute of Sport’s Gold Coast canoeing base ahead of the Games.

Former TSS and Bond University student Mathew Belcher won gold in the

470 class sailing.