Defending champion Stephanie Rice unconvincingly reached Monday night’s semi-finals of the 200m individual medley as the ninth quickest qualifier in Monday morning’s heats, even though Alicia Coutts was fifth quickest.

Controversial swimmer Nick D’Arcy was the 12th fastest into the 200m butterfly semi-finals, while Kylie Palmer and Bronte Barratt reached their 200m freestyle semis.

Meanwhile, Australia’s failure to win any medal, let alone gold, in the 4x100m freestyle relay is still a disaster.

Matt Targett says he had a lot of time to reflect on the world champions’ Olympic blowout on Sunday throughout a sleepless evening and agrees with head coach Leigh Nugent’s evaluation that it was “a bit of a disastrous end result.”

“Leigh’s known for his honesty and which is not far from the truth,” Targett informed reporters on Monday.

Targett says he and teammates James Magnussen, Eamon Sullivan and James Roberts have been all optimistic before being blown away by France, the US and Russia.

“We, like everybody else, expected to come home with gold or at least be on the podium unless of course something went slightly wrong,” Targett stated.

“It went more than somewhat incorrect.”

Planet champion Magnussen has come underneath the most fire for a poor opening leg of 48.03 seconds, almost a 2nd slower than his very best, and Targett did small to ease the strain on the group leader.

“We had a program of establishing a lead and constructing on it and that didn’t go to prepare,” he stated.

“… Naturally nobody anticipated James to swim 48, that may well have thrown us a bit.”

But he defended Magnussen for sitting head bowed throughout Roberts’ final leg in which he commenced in 3rd location but was passed by Russian Danila Izotov to drop out of the medals.

“He was sitting there in a state of shock,” Targett mentioned.

Australia’s rowers had some effective results at Eton Dorney on Monday morning, with veteran Drew Ginn’s bid for four gold medals from 4 Olympics remaining on monitor.

The new generation Oarsome Foursome of Ginn, James Chapman, Joshua Dunkley-Smith and William Lockwood set an Olympic record in winning their heat, many seconds quicker than defending champion Wonderful Britain who also won their heat effortlessly.

They’ll next row in Thursday’s semi-finals.

Brooke Pratley and Kim Crow rowed straight into Friday’s last of the women’s double sculls with a strong win in their heat, but will discover it challenging to top rated Britain’s planet champions who also set an Olympic record in their heat win.

The most significant surprise came in the women’s quad sculls, with Kerry Hore, Dana Faletic, Amy Clay and Pauline Frasca qualifying for Wednesday’s last with a stirring repechage victory.

The men’s eights snuck into Wednesday’s final by coming fourth in their repechage.

On Sunday evening, Christian Sprenger lifted Australian spirits with a shock silver medal in the men’s 100m breaststroke and Alicia Coutts took bronze in the women’s 100m butterfly.

Australia’s female gymnasts missed out by 1 stage in qualifying for the teams last.

But Lauren Mitchell in the floor and Ashleigh Brennan and Emily Tiny in the all-close to all qualified for their individual finals.

Australian men’s volleyball crew lost to Argentina in their opening game, whilst table tennis veteran William Henzell reached Australia’s greatest Olympic outcome in the sport in reaching the 3rd round with a win more than Portugal’s Joao Monteiro, ranked practically one hundred areas greater.