27. Olympic Summer Games
Olympic Medals in the games of 2000 in Sydney
927 Medals in 34 Sports in 300 Events
After 1956 in Melbourne, Australia was the second host city of the Summer Olympics in Sydney from September 15 to October 1, 2000. Sydney narrowly prevailed against Beijing in the fourth ballot, where the Summer Games would take place eight years later. In the Sydney Olympic Park, almost all sports facilities were gathered in one area. For the first time in Olympic history, the Olympic Village was really one. It consisted of 630 houses, which accommodated over 10,600 athletes. All of these houses, between 95 m² and 125 m², had been sold before the games opened.
After the lighting of the Olympic torch, it was first carried through Greece, then it was flown to Oceania. There she was to visit all the countries of the continent, starting in Guam, followed by Palau, Micronesia, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Papua Neuuniea, Vanuatu, Samoa, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga and New Zealand. Only then did the flame reach Australia. This was followed by 27,000 kilometers, although not all of them were covered on an ongoing or walking basis. There was also his surfer on his surfboard, a diver under water, a camel and a doctor plane. The last torchbearer was the runner Cathy Freeman, who is also an ambassador for the Australian Aborigines. The pictures around her have the Games 2000 in memory. Freeman was standing ankle deep in a round pool of water, behind her a waterfall, she led the torch to the surface of the water and lit a ring of fire. It is the focus of the rising ring of fire, which finally drives up to its final position in the stadium. The athletic highlight was delivered by the athlete over 400m. Despite the enormous media pressure, she won the competition in her eye-catching full body suit.
Her compatriot, the seventeen-year-old swimmer Ian Thorpe was the Australian superstar, he won three gold and one silver medal. He was the most successful with the Dutch, the swimmer Inge de Bruijn and the cyclist Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel. Other sporting highlights were the six medals by the Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov, the fifth gold medal by the British rower Steven Redgrave, who won a gold medal every time from 1984 to 2000.
It is worth mentioning an athlete who did not win a medal: fifteen-year-old Michael Phelps was able to sniff Olympic air for the first time, he was fifth over 200m of dolphin swimming. At that time no one had any idea what phenomenal Olympic balance would develop for him.
Éric Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea made the games odd. At first he stood with two opponents from Niger and Tajikistan on the pool bike in the first run over the 100m freestyle of the swimmers with the slowest times from pre-competitions. Moussambani had only learned to swim eight months before the games before he had never seen a 50m pool before coming to Sydney. At home he had trained in a 15-meter pool. Nations that do not have a single athlete who have qualified in any competition are given a quota place by the IOC so that the nation can participate in the games at all. Most nations use this over 100m in athletics. Equatorial Guinea had chosen the 100m freestyle. At the start, his competitors from Niger and Tajikistan were so nervous that they jumped into the pool before the start signal and had to be disqualified. Moussambani had to race alone. He started the first 50 meters quickly for his standards, with the second length the power ran out visibly. The last 15 meters he was fighting so hard that it was not certain that he would not go down and that he would have to be saved from drowning out of the pool. However, after 1 minute and 52.72 seconds, he made it 64 seconds slower than the world record.
Two athletes won medals at first, but it later turned out that they had doped and their years of lying were supposed to intensify the scandal: Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones.
The American Lance Armstrong finished third in the individual time trial in 58:14. He also won the Tour de France seven times in a row from 1999 to 2005. An incredible series. Therefore, his cycling career was always accompanied by rumors of doping. Armstrong denied having doped. Armstrong's fate was that his teammates Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton confessed to doping with Lance Armstrong. Nevertheless, he continued to argue that he did not use doping agents. In October 2012, the UCI, the world cycling association, recognized the seven victories in the Tour de France. On January 17, 2013, Lance Armstrong admitted that she had doped in the American show Ophra's Next Chapter by star host Ophra Winfrey for years. The IOC immediately deprived him of the bronze medal. This was no longer awarded.
Marion Jones married the shot putter Cottrell J. Hunter in 1998. This had been tested with the doping agent Nadrolon before the 2000 Olympic Games. Marion Jones initially defended him, the marriage divorced in 2001. At the Olympic Games in Sidney, she was the first to cross the finish line in runs over 100m, 200m and 4x400m, in third place in the long jump and in the 4x100m relay. The comparison to Wilma Rudolph has already been drawn in the media. In 2003, a doping scandal involving the American company Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) was uncovered by journalists. This company had provided trainers and their top American and European athletes with designer steroids for years. Marion Jones was also on the BALCO customer list. She denied having received doping drugs from BALCO. In 2005 Jones was no longer invited to many meetings due to initial allegations. In June 2006 she was tested positive for EPO (erythropoietin), a performance-enhancing agent, but since the B sample was negative, she was still considered innocent. She even announced through the media that her innocence has now been finally proven.
In October 2007 Jones finally pleaded guilty to doping in court in New York and lied to the 2000 Olympic Games in the doping investigation. Her trainer Trevor Graham had given her supplements that she shouldn't be talking about. She felt the performance-enhancing effect. This admission had far-reaching consequences. Since she testified twice under oath never to have doped, she was sentenced to 6 months in prison and 400 hours of community service. In another ruling, she was sentenced to return $ 700,000 in prize money and $ 100,000 in grants from the United States. At this point, Jones is said to have had only $ 2,000 left after spending all of her money on her lawyers. She was bankrupt. In addition, all of her 5 medals from the 2000 Olympics were withdrawn and returned. Since the second over 100m Ekaterini Thanou was convicted of a doping offense before the 2004 Olympic Games, the gold medal remains vacant. After complaints by relay runners, the disqualifications of the USA were withdrawn again and these runners were able to keep their medals, since in 2000 there was still no explicit regulation that the entire relay team would be disqualified if a relay member was violated by doping. In 2012, as a State Department envoy, Jones traveled around the world telling her story to young people so that they could think carefully about what decisions to make. Her career leap from Doper to diplomat is controversial.