 Quirk at the homecoming celebration in Wagga Wagga | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of birth | 28 March 1992 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Height | 1.72 m (5 ft 8 in) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 58.5 kg (129 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Alicia Quirk (born 28 March 1992) is a professional Australian rugby union player. She won a gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
Rugby union, commonly known in most of the world simply as rugby, is a contact team sport which originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is between two teams of 15 players using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field with H-shaped goalposts at each end.
The 2016 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXXI Olympiad and commonly known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event that was held from 5 to 21 August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with preliminary events in some sports beginning on 3 August. These were the first Olympic Games ever to be held in South America and the second to be held in a developing country, after the 1968 games in Mexico City.
Quirk represents Australia in Sevens Rugby. Born in Wagga Wagga, NSW and playing for The Tribe at a club level, she debuted for Australia in May 2013. She also represents Australia in Touch Football, and was part of the team which won the Touch World Cup 2011. [1] She studied Bachelor of Physiotherapy at Charles Sturt University, Albury-Wodonga, graduating in 2013. Representative Honours include ACT. [2] [3] [4] Quirk was a member of Australia's women's sevens team at the 2016 Summer Olympics, [5] defeating New Zealand in the final to win the inaugural Olympic gold medal in the sport. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. The population of 25 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney. The country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
Rugby sevens, and originally known as seven-a-side rugby, is a variant of rugby union in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40 minute halves. Rugby sevens is administered by World Rugby, the body responsible for rugby union worldwide. The game is popular at all levels, with amateur and club tournaments generally held in the summer months. Sevens is one of the most well distributed forms of rugby, and is popular in parts of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and especially in the South Pacific.
The first Touch Football World Cup tournament was held in 1988.
