MITCHELL JOHNSON: Nina Kennedy, Matt Wearn, Keegan Palmer and our pursuit cyclists have done the nation proud.

It’s Australia’s best-ever haul of Olympic gold at Paris 2024!

What a great achievement so far with still some great opportunities to get more.

I will write more on our successes once the Games are over, but first let’s celebrate that overnight success — four more gold medals.

As an Australian it is exciting to see our small country do so well compared to those countries with hundreds of millions of people at the top of the medal tally.

We pride ourselves on performance, passion, dedication and humility, all of which has been on full show at these Games.

It wasn’t quite the Ashes, but it’s always good to get one over the Poms as our cycling boys did in the team pursuit, while Matt Wearn won it for us on in his dinghy — how Australian.

At the athletics, it was great to see Nina Kennedy get what she went to Paris for — a pole vaulting gold. While she did everything right on the night, Kennedy would have been holding her breath waiting for US rival Katie Moon’s final attempt and thankful she did not have to share the honours with Moon as she did at the world championships last year.

To have no control as an athlete over the final result must have been torture.

There was another skateboarding success with back-to-back gold medal winner Keegan Palmer hanging ten better than the rest, but for me the best story is our youngest ever gold medal Olympian, 14 year-old Arisa Trew.

What was so good about this, well where do I start? A 14-year-old doing spin tricks and impressing the great Tony Hawk, for one.

But it was the way Arisa went about that impressed me the most. She decided not to take the safe option in her first run, even coming off her board at one point. A lesson for all, just go for it!

She didn’t let the situation get the best of her, stayed positive and wasn’t afraid to fail.

Arisa showed us her amazing skills and excited the crowd while having a bloody good time doing it. That’s how you do it.

She’s years ahead of her age and shows maturity of a competitor twice her age.

That’s something I wish I had at an earlier age and something all athletes can learn from.

I’m sure we will be seeing more of Arisa in the future.

The one thing that I’ve noticed throughout the track and field is there have been plenty of personal and season bests, better known as PBs and SBs.

All the athletes who have achieved these feats can be proud, as it’s a huge achievement.

I’ve also heard athletes apologise to their country and there is no need for them to do that.

It does show humility and shows how much it means to them. We as fans see they are out there giving it your all.

The Olympics are the best of the best and the Aussies have continually proven we are some of the best athletes in the world with 18 gold, 12 silver and 11 bronze 41 to show for it..

While we have seen some outstanding performances, there have been some shock results.

Peter Bol’s 800m race wasn’t his best and two-time world champion in the javelin, Kelsey-Lee Barber didn’t qualify but we could see that it wasn’t due to lack of effort or lack of desire.

The lead-in for these two and others wasn’t the best and injuries and other issues played a part in that. I’m not making excuses, I’m just showing highlighting the fact as Olympic athletes, it’s tough when an injury occurs months out from the biggest sporting meet of your life after you’ve spent years preparing for it.

Unfortunately, that’s sport.

What I do appreciate is that this doesn’t stop these athletes from competing and giving in their all.

The Australian never-give-up attitude is what we love to see.