Olympic Series

Olympics – 2000 Sydney

Fifty one nations won at least one Olympic title, and eighty National Olympic Councils went home with at least one medal, setting a new record that offered proof – if proof were needed – of the global nature of the final Games of the century.

The end of the century and the millennium, Sydney offered a Games full of records: there were close to two hundred nations present (eighty of which won medals), more than 300 events, 10,500 athletes, 16,000 media staff and almost 47,000 volunteers. The purpose built Olympic stadium was the biggest yet, seating 110,000.

Despite this vast scale, the Games were perfectly organized, and restored the confidence of an Olympic movement shaken by the poor organization and mercenary drift of Atlanta, growing concern over doping, and the corruption scandal surrounding the attribution of the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. Sydney was the breath of fresh air that sport desperately needed. It was as if the waters of its magnificent harbour had redeeming, purifying powers. Put more prosaically, Australia, whose population contains the largest proportions of people practising sports of any country on earth, a nation in which sport is a kind of religion, was a safe bet for a movement in desperate need of good news. Sydney provided it in good abundance.

At the edge of world, the uncertainties of the recent past paled beneath an eternally blue sky. In an extraordinary atmosphere of celebration and sporting achievement, Steve Redgrave, Marion Jones, Inge De Bruijn and Leontien Van Moorsel were among the heroes of the Games – not to mention the vulnerable, talismanic, inspirational Cathy Freeman, whose victory in her home nation had resonances beyond the confines of sport.

Jones, like a Whirlwind

She won Gold medals in 100, 200 and 4x400 meters and bronze in the long jump and 4x100 meters. Marion Jones fell to her knees in front of the clock. Her amazing lap as part of the American 4x400 team was an incredible piece of running and left the 110,000 spectators astonished. She had already successfully competed in the 100 and 200 meters, been through qualifying and the final of the long jump, winning Bronze, and had run the 4x100 meters, but in this her final race, the 24 year old finished her lap in a time of 49.4 secs (manual timing) and allowing the US team to win the race, adding a third Gold medal to her collection. She began her 400 meters leg cautiously, like somebody unaccustomed to the race; as her last 4x400meters had been long back when she was in school. This did not prevent her from assuring victory in Sydney by passing the baton to La Tasha Colander – Richardson with a considerable lead. Her trainer, Trevor Graham, was not surprised by his performance and said ‘I know what she is capable of. I am convinced that if Marion had trained for the 400 meters, she could break the world record’. That belongs to Marita Koch with a time of 47.60 secs.

Representing For Two Nations

Cathy Freeman won for Australia and the Aboriginal community. The pact between modern sport and nationalism has its ambiguities, and sport, including the Olympic movement, has sometimes struggled to contain the very nationalistic fervour it has fostered. Cathy Freeman carried the hopes of two nations into the 2000 Games: those of the host country, Australia, and those of the Aboriginal community into which she had been born. Already the first indigenous athlete to win a medal in an individual event by taking Silver in the 400 meters in Atlanta, subjugation, disenfranchisement and white supremacy were not theoretical ideas to her. Ever since Sydney had been allotted the Games at a Monte Carlo ceremony in 1993, Cathy Freeman’s life centred on the women’s 400 meters final at the 2000 Olympics. Freeman celebrated her victory in the 400 meters by trailing two flags behind her on her victory lap: one for Australia, the other for the aboriginal people of Australia: a double triumph for this inspirational athlete.

Savon: The King of the Ring

Cuba’s heavyweight star won his third Gold medal in as many Games, equalling the record of Laszlo Papp and his late fellow Cuban Teofilo Stevenson. In 1986 as the great Teofilo , Cuba’s three times Olympics heavy weight champion from 1972 to 1980, worked towards his final world title, he sparred with an exciting eighteen year old Felix Savon. It was the handover from one legend to the next. Stevenson had been the most impressive boxer since Cassius Clay, although the two men never met: Stevenson even turned down US $ 5 million to fight Ali, sticking to his revolutionary convictions. Savon first entered the Cuban sports system as a rower, although when he won a salsa contest on Cuban Television, his father insisted he was born to be a dancer. That was before boxing coaches spotted him as a fourteen year old, and in 1986, four years after his first bout, Savon won his first world amateur championship. It was the first of a record breaking six world amateur titles. Savon retired from boxing with a career total  of 592 victories against 17 defeats, after sixteen years at the summit of amateur boxing.

Gebrsalassie, Small But Mighty

Haile Gebrsalassie retained his 10,000 meters title after a memorable duel with Paul Tergat. He carried with him: the joy of movement, the joy of competition, the joy of simply being alive. His, more than any other was the peaceful face of sport. He had a cartilage problem and ever since 1993 when he had won the title of world champion at the age of 20, he had not felt so nervous before a competition. In the final, Tergat of Kenya was his main rival. Gebrsalassie, the 10,000 meters world record holder, with a time of 26: 22.75, knew every last centimetre of suffering involved in the race. The 2000 Olympic final was a dazzling event, building up slowly over some twenty seven minutes at an even more remarkable pace. With nothing between them after twenty four laps, the two men were destined for a battle over the last 400 meters. And that is how they found themselves, side by side on the final lap of the Olympic track, desperately searching for that final scrap of energy. Tergat rounded the final turn in the lead. Then there were just under 100 meters to go, and there was still a story of two men, completely different in stature and style, making the final effort, after which there would be nothing more to give. For a long time, for a very long time, Paul Tergat ate up the ground with his huge strides, which seemed to carry him inevitably towards victory. But all the time, Gebrselassie with his shorter, faster steps, like those of a sprinter, closed in inexorably on the Kenyan. The crowd rumbled and bellowed, and finally broke into a deafening roar as Gebrselassie threw himself at the line. Only a photograph could separate the two men. The electronic timing system separated them with just nine hundredths of a second after the 10 km duel.

Redgrave Reigns Supreme

Winner in the coxless fours, the British oarsman took his fifth Olympic title in five Games. Rowing is a noble sport: when the competition is over and the medals ceremony comes around, this proud discipline tears all its participants equally. There is no grand podium to place Caesar above Pompey. The medal winners all stand on the same plane – the platform of honour. Normally. However, at the medal ceremony for the coxless fours a chink appeared in this egalitarian protocol. The medals are traditionally awarded in the order in which the oarsman sit in the boat. Not this time; and the flouter of was none other than Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth, a former Olympian herself and a member of the IOC, who gracefully sidestepped convention to honour the third oar in the victorious boat; a certain Steve Redgrave.

The Torpedo

Two Gold medals and two world records in the space of an hour: the Australian got everything right on his first day at the Olympics. After an ankle sprain in October 1999, Thorpe continued to swimming length after length, even with his leg in plaster, and came back with an arm action to match his criminally good leg action.

Pieter Van den Hoogenband, VDH, Master of the Waves

Unable to improve on the world record he set the night before, VDH, still took Gold in the 100meters, deposing Aleksandr Popov. The Olympic 100 meters freestyle final has produced great champions: Weismuller, Schollander, Wenden, Spitz, Montgomerry, Gaines and Biondi. This time Russia’s Popov was attempting to make history by becoming the first man to win three consecutive Olympic titles in the event. Victory would have capped eight years of almost uninterrupted dominance in the sprint. The tension was palpable. This time no emotion showed on the faces of the favourites:Popov, the titleholder, VDH the world record holder, and Klim the former record holder. VDH became the first to hold Olympic titles and world records in the 100 and 200 meters since mark Spitz in 1972.

 The Games In Brief

Opening Date                                  15 September 2000

Closing Date                                    1 October 2000

Host Nation                                      Australia

Nations Represented                       199

Athletes                                            10,651 (4,069 women)

Sports                                                29 (25 open to women)

Events                                                300 (132 open to women)

Games Officially Opened By              Sir William Deane,    Governor of Australia

Olympic Flame Lit By                         Cathy Freeman (athletics)

Olympic Oath Read By                        Rechelle Hawkes (hockey)

IOC President                                      Juan Antonio Samaranch (ESP)

North and South Korea walked out under the same flag, while East Tmor took part under the Olympic IOA banner (Individual Olympic Athletes).

PS -: matter researched from the archives of the Olympic Museum in Laussane.

Brigadier S D Dangwal

=919410900051