EXCLUSIVE: Tamsyn Manou pinpoints 'dangerous' Aussie discus ace as Paris 2024 gold medal chance
Australian athletics world champion Tamsyn Manou has pinpointed discus ace Matt Denny as a dark horse ahead of the Paris Olympics, declaring the Queenslander a hot chance to win his first major championship medal — and possibly of the gold variety.
Manou, the 2008 World Indoor Championships gold medallist in the women's 800m, was announced on Friday as an expert athletics commentator on Nine's Wide World of Sports broadcast team for Paris 2024.
When asked by Wide World of Sports which Australian track and field athletes she considered dark horses for medals or finals appearances at the Paris Games, the three-time Olympian named Denny, 800m runner Catriona Bisset, 800m and 1500m rising star Abbey Caldwell, 1500m champion Oliver Hoare and long jumper Brooke Buschkuehl.
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"He's probably a medal favourite, but he just hasn't got on the podium yet in terms of the Olympics and World Champs, but that's Matty Denny," Manou told Wide World of Sports.
"I think he so deserves to get an Olympic medal at these Olympics. He obviously missed a medal at the last Olympics by the smallest of margins and came fourth, and he was fourth at the World Champs [last year].
Australian discus ace Matt Denny in action at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. Reuters
"He's the one for mine. It would be awesome to see him win a medal, but I think he's probably on people's radar.
"Fourth [at the Olympics and World Championships] is incredible. I think people forget that. It's just that as Australians everyone wants bling. Matty wants bling — he's a high achiever and he knows what he's capable of. To throw so well at two global championships and just be off the podium when you're throwing national records is heartbreaking."
In finishing fourth at Tokyo 2020, Denny fell just five centimetres short of the bronze medallist's mark.
In finishing fourth at last year's World Championships in Budapest, the two-time Olympian missed the podium by 61 centimetres. His throw of 68.24 metres would have secured a medal at every previous edition of the World Championships.
Australian 800m world champion Tamsyn Manou has joined Nine's Wide World of Sports broadcast team as an expert athletics commentator for Paris 2024. Nine
He made a breakthrough at last year's Diamond League final in Eugene, launching the discus 68.43 metres to conquer the world's premier one-day athletics series for the first time. He defeated a field that combined for one Olympic gold medal, four World Championship gold medals and six Diamond League final titles.
"It's a catalyst sometimes, isn't it?" Manou said.
"Sometimes you just need to know you can beat them when it counts, and to beat them where there's a bit on the line in a Diamond League final — to do that then, he's going to take all that confidence through his training, through the Australian season and then onto that plane towards Europe this year.
"That makes him dangerous — he knows he can beat them and he knows he can beat them in a big meet. That's a lot, that might be the one little thing that he needed."
