Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Sydney Olympic 2000 Cont....


Sports

See the medal winners, ordered by sport:
The Sydney Olympics also featured wheelchair racing[11] and chess[12] as demonstration sports.

[edit]Medal count

Main article: 2000 Summer Olympics medal table
These are the top medal-collecting nations for the 2000 Games. (Host country is highlighted)
Rank↓Nation↓Gold↓Silver↓Bronze↓Total↓
1 United States40243397
2 Russia32282989
3 China28161458
4 Australia16251758
5 Germany13172656
6 France13141138
7 Italy1381334
8 Netherlands129425
9 Cuba1111729
10 Great Britain1110728
Marion Jones, winner of three gold and two bronze medals for the United States, relinquished them in October 2007 after confessing that she had taken tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) from September 2000 through July 2001.[13] The IOC formally stripped Jones and her relay teammates of their 5 medals, although her teammates were to be offered opportunity to present a case for retaining their medals.[14] Eventually, Jones's teammates had their medals reinstated.[15] Jones was also banned from competing for two years by the IAAF.[14]
On 2 August 2008, the International Olympic Committee stripped the gold medal from the U.S. men's 4x400-meter relay team, after Antonio Pettigrew admitted using a banned substance.[16] Three of the four runners in the event final, including Pettigrew and twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison, and preliminary round runner Jerome Young, all have admitted or tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.[16] Only Angelo Taylor, who also ran in preliminary rounds, and world record holder Michael Johnson were not implicated.[16] The medal was the fifth gold medal for world record holder Johnson, who stated he had already planned to return the medal because he felt "cheated, betrayed and let down" by Pettigrew's testimony.[16] The gold medal position for this event is now vacant.
On April 28, 2010, the IOC stripped China of its bronze medal from the women's team competition for using an underage gymnast. The medal was awarded to the United States.[17]

[edit]Participating nations

Participating countries
Number of athletes
199 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated in the Sydney Games, two more than in1996 Summer Olympics. In addition, there were four Timorese Individual Olympic Athletes at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Eritrea, Micronesia and Palau made their Olympic debut this year.
Afghanistan was the only 1996 participant that did not participate in 2000, having been banned due to the extremist rule of the Taliban's oppression of women and its prohibition of sports.

[edit]Venues

Main article: 2000 Summer Olympics venues

[edit]Sydney Olympic Park

[edit]Sydney

The Dunc Gray Velodrome

[edit]Outside Sydney

[edit]Broadcast rights

Most of the footage used by international broadcasters of the Opening and Closing Ceremony was directed out of SOBO (Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation) by Australian director Peter Faiman.

[edit]Television

Running up to the games an Australian comedy satire, The Games, was broadcast in Australia (it was also broadcast, at a later date, in New Zealand). The series, which starred satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe along with Australian comedian Gina Riley and actor Nicholas Bell, was written by John Clarke and Ross Stevenson. It centred on the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), and featured a spoof of the issues and events that the top-level organisers and bureaucrats suffered in the lead up to the games.
NBC presented over 400+ hours on their main and sister stations, CNBC and MSNBC. The downside of the American coverage was that it was presented on tape delay rather than live due to the 15-hour time difference. The lone exception was the gold medal game in Men's Basketball, which featured the U.S. defeating France 85–75. The game was televised live in primetime on Saturday, 30 September (EDT), which was the afternoon of Sunday, 1 October in Australia. In their 2004 coverage, NBC and its sister networks presented live coverage throughout the morning and afternoon, while showing marquee events pre-taped in prime time.
A poignant part of the media coverage happened in the Canadian broadcast. On 28 September, the CBC was airing the Olympics, when the network's chief correspondent, Peter Mansbridge, broke in and said:
“Hello from Toronto, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Sad news to report from Montreal...Pierre Elliott Trudeau, prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1984 with one brief interruption in 1979, has passed away...”
The CBC's Olympic coverage for the bulk of that evening was replaced by coverage of Trudeau's passing. The CBC resumed Olympics coverage the next day, although the network would occasionally break away for coverage of events in honour of the late former prime minister.

[edit]Organization

SOCOG organisational structure circa 1998 – five groups and 33 divisions reporting to the CEO are organised primarily along functional lines with only a limited number of divisions (e.g. Interstate Football and Villages) anticipating a venue focussed design.
SOCOG organisational structure circa 1999 – functional divisions and precinct/venue streams are organised in a matrix structure linked to the Main Operations Centre (MOC). Some functions such as Project Management (in the Games Coordination group) continue to exist largely outside this matrix structure.

[edit]Bodies responsible for the Olympics

A number of quasi-government bodies were responsible for the construction, organisation and execution of the Sydney Games. These included:
  • SOCOG the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, primarily responsible for the staging of the Games
  • OCA the Olympic Coordination Authority, primarily responsible for construction and oversight
  • ORTA the Olympic Roads and Transport Authority
  • OSCC the Olympic Security Command Centre
  • OIC the Olympic Intelligence Centre
  • JTF Gold the Australian Defence Force Joint Taskforce Gold
  • SOBO the Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation (nominally part of SOCOG)
  • IBM provider of technology and the Technical Command Center
  • Telstra provider of telecommunications
These organisations worked closely together and with other bodies such as:
These bodies are often collectively referred to as the "Olympic Family".

[edit]Organisation of the Paralympics

Organisation of the 2000 Summer Paralympics was the responsibility of SPOC the Sydney Paralympic Organising Committee. However much of the planning and operation of the Paralympic Games was outsourced to SOCOG such that most operational programmes planned both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

[edit]Other Olympic events

Organisation of the Olympic Games included not only the actual sporting events but also the management (and sometimes construction) of the sporting venues and surrounding precincts, the organisation of the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival andOlympic torch relay. The route the relay took is shown here:

[edit]Phases of the Olympic project

The staging of the Olympics were treated as a project on a vast scale, with the project broken into several broad phases:
  • 1993 to 1996 – positioning
  • 1997 – going operational
  • 1998 – procurement/venuisation
  • 1999 – testing/refinement
  • 2000 – implementation
  • 2001 – post implementation and wind-down

[edit]SOCOG organisational design

The internal organisation of SOCOG evolved over the phases of the project and changed, sometimes radically, several times.
In late 1998 the design was principally functional. The top two tiers below the CEO Sandy Hollway consisted of five groups (managed by Group General Managers and the Deputy CEO) and twenty divisions (managed by divisional General Managers), which in turn were further broken up into programmes and sub-programmes or projects.
In 1999 functional areas (FAs) broke up into geographic precinct and venue teams (managed by Precinct Managers and Venue Managers) with functional area staff reporting to both the FA manager and the venue manager. Ie, SOCOG moved to a matrix structure. The Interstate Football division extant in 1998 was the first of these geographically based venue teams.

[edit]Volunteer program

The origins of the volunteer program for Sydney 2000 dates back to the bid, as early as 1992.
On 17 December 1992, a group of Sydney citizens, interested in the prospect of hosting the 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, gathered for a meeting at Sports House, at Wentworth Park in Sydney.
In the period leading up to 1999, after Sydney had won the bid, the small group of volunteers grew from approximately 42 to around 500. These volunteers became known as Pioneer Volunteers. The Pioneer Volunteer program was managed internally by SOCOG's Volunteer Services Department in consultation with prominent peak groups like The Centre for Volunteering (Volunteering NSW) and TAFE. Some of the Pioneer Volunteers still meet every four months, an unseen legacy of the games which brought together a community spirit not seen before.
During the Olympic games tens of thousands of volunteers, the official figure was placed at 46, 967,[18] helped everywhere at the Olympic venues and elsewhere in the city. They were honoured with a parade like the athletes had a few days before.

[edit]

The bid logo featured a stylised image of the Sydney Opera House, whilst the official logo featured the stylised image of a runner in motion and was designed by leading Melbourne graphic design firm, FHA Image Design.
The bid logo was designed by Michael Bryce, an architect and graphic designer, whose wife Quentin Bryce became Governor of Queenslandin 2003 and Governor-General of Australia in 2008.[19]

[edit]The Mascots

The official mascots
The official mascots chosen for the 2000 Summer Olympics were:[20]
  • Syd the Platypus — 'Syd' was named for 'Sydney', the host city for the Games
  • Millie the Echidna — 'Millie' was named for 'Millennium'
  • Olly the Kookaburra — 'Olly' was named for 'Olympics'
They were designed by Matt Hatton and Jozef Szekeres.
An unofficial mascot
There was also an unofficial mascot, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, which was popularised by comedy team The Dream with Roy and HG. Roy and HG also frequently disparaged the official mascots on their television program.[21][22][23]

[edit]The Bronze Medals

Australian 1 cent coin.JPG
Until the end of 1991,[24] Australia minted both a:

Australian 2 cent coin.JPG
In 1992, these coins began to be removed from circulation. People were urged to exchange them for coins still in circulation.
Both the 1 cent coins and 2 cent coins were melted down and turned into bronze medals for the 2000 Olympics.[25][26]

[edit]Award

The International Olympic Committee awarded Sydney and its inhabitants with the "Pierre de Coubertin Trophy" in recognition of the collaboration and happiness shown by the people of Sydney during the event to all the athletes and visitors around the world.[27]

[edit]NSWPF Olympic Commendation and Citation

  • The New South Wales Police Force was granted use of the Olympic Rings in the New South Wales Police Force Olympic Commendation and the New South Wales Police Force Olympic Citation for having staged the "safest" games ever.

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