London 2012 - Day 3 Summary - Medals and Suprises

Today twelve gold medals have been awarded in London aswell as many of the team sports have had their initial matches. There have been plenty of good duels and many suprises and the medal table after day one looks like this:

China has really gotten out in front winning four golds in Shooting, Swimming and Weightlifting. In second place a bit suprising we find Italy who managed to take two golds today. I say suprising because one of their gold medals came from Men's Team Archery, that's right, the event every expert had pegged South Korea winning after thier stellar performances in the first two rounds. However the Koreans lost to USA in the semi-finals and ended up with a dissapointing bronze. Another suprise came in the Road Cycling event where everyone had GB athletes ranked for medals. However they failed to reach a break out group and ended off the podium. A good thing for Norway who took an unexpected bronze medal :D

Italy did a spectacular job in the Women's Individual Foil Fencing event where they took out all three medals crushing the opposition. The Australian 4x100m Freestyle Swimming Relay team also dominated in their event suprisingly beating the Netherlands golden girls in the process.

In the Women's Handball event Great Britain had their first ever Olympic handball match against Montenegro, one of the favourite teams in the competition. In my opinion the end result doesn't really tell the story of how far this team has come in only six years where many players only started playing the game four years ago. They stayed behind Montenegro around 5 points for almost half the match not allowing them to run ahead which is incredible for this team, in the end they ended up loosing 31-19, but they have a real chance of making the semi-finals as their other opponents are far less dangerous than Montenegro. Another shock came in the other group where defending champions Norway lost against France 22-21 after being behind the entire game. They will have to sharpen up if they want to win this tournament, and France just might end up as their opponents in an eventual final.

In Women's Football there were no upsets and clear favourites are turning out for the eight spots in the quarter-finals.China dominated the field in badminton showing why they always win many golds in this event. Many other events also started today, but it's still hard to make predictions after just qualifications and/or first matches.

It has been a great first day of the games and if you are interested in more detailed results go to www.london2012.com where you can find all the results from the first day of competition.