Ariarne Titmus, one of Australia’s golden girls in the pool in Paris this week, was born just 7 days before the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony in 2000, while her team mate Mollie O’Callaghan wasn’t even conceived yet. Our flag bearer and multiple kayak/canoe medallist Jessica Fox was just six-years-old in 2000, born into a family of champion canoe / kayakers and inspired by her parents to launch her Olympic dreams; while a then eight-year-old Grace Brown began dreaming of becoming an Olympian after being inspired by Cathy Freeman and Susie O’Neill at the Sydney Games in 2000.
Watching our wonder women shine in the City of Light this past fortnight, and following the action amid the spectacular backdrops of the Seine, the Eiffel Tower and Versailles, took me back to the turn of the millennium when Sydney was the star of the show.
The atmosphere in Sydney during the heady fortnight of the 2000 Olympics was absolutely electric. Australians have always been a sports-mad community, but as host nation of the biggest sporting event in the world, it was next level. From our iconic destinations being turned into venues – the beach volleyball at Bondi Beach, the sailing on Sydney Harbour and the triathlon finishing at the Sydney Opera House – to all the action at Sydney Olympic Park in the west and hundreds of thousands gathering at live sites around the country, we were alive with excitement, joy, and a sea of green and gold. Even if you didn’t like sport, you couldn’t help but catch Olympic fever.
That September in 2000 changed Australia for many reasons, and not just because it was when the then-Mary Donaldson met the then-Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark in a pub in Sydney’s CBD in the ultimate meet-cute that altered the course of the Danish monarchy. It was the moment we feel in love with Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe, the Hockeyroos and the unlikeliest Olympic star that was the pack-a-day smoker Jai Taurima who long jumped his way to a silver medal.
We collectively adored Eric the Eel, aka Eric Moussambani, the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who recorded the slowest time in Olympic history in his 100m freestyle heat but captured the world’s hearts with his grit and determination and epitomising the Olympic spirit when he swam his laps virtually alone in the pool. There was heartbreak too: watching Kerry Saville be disqualified just 120m from the finish line as she entered the Olympic Stadium on the cusp of winning gold for Australia in the 20km walk, was crushing for the entire nation.
On TV we were all glued to comedians HG & Roy and their nightly satire show The Dream with the stuffed toy Fatso the Fat-Assed Wombat, who amusingly became the unofficial mascot of the Olympics. And who could forget the Sydney Olympic volunteers? The Games Force of more than 40,000 smiley, happy people in the now iconic blue and white swirl uniforms who welcomed the world to our Olympics.
The turn of the millennium was an important year globally, and not just because the much-hyped Y2K bug thankfully didn’t cause the technical world to end as it had been predicted as the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve. John Howard was enjoying his second term as Australian Prime Minister, Bill Clinton was the US President, Vladmir Putin was elected President of Russia, and Donald Trump was just a flashy New York businessman. It was the year Brad and Jen got married at the peak of Friends popularity, the music charts were filled with Destiny’s Child and Robbie Williams, and the Spice Girls were still together. Locally, Powderfinger ruled our airways, Russell Crowe was preparing to win his first Oscar for Gladiator, and in May 2000, as the Olympic stadium was being constructed at Homebush preparing for the world stage, 250,000 Australians walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the Walk for Reconciliation in a powerful show of reconciliation and unity with Australia’s First Nations peoples.
It was a time of relative innocence and freedom: a year before 9/11 altered the world forever; pre-social media – 3 years before My Space and 6 years before Facebook launched; pre-mass streaming on TV – 15 years before Netflix launched in Australia; and pre-smart phones – while we had mobile phones, they were more of the old school Nokia brick variety and it would be 7 years before Apple would launch the first iPhone. It is hard to fathom now watching an event without thousands of phones held high recording the moment, but while cameras were everywhere in 2000, it was a liberating time when you actually took in the moments in real life.
I first fell in love with the Olympics as a sporty running-obsessed eight-year-old and have fond memories of begging my Dad to let me stay up late to watch the 1984 Los Angeles Games on TV with him. Cut to 2000 and as a freshly graduated cadet reporter I was awarded the privilege of being an Olympics reporter for News Corp and, as our company was a media partner, I was lucky enough to be given the honour of carrying the Olympic torch during the relay. Carrying the Olympic flame for 500m as it made its way to Sydney and playing my own tiny part in Olympic history remains one of the highlights of my life.
In fact, the entire Sydney Olympics does. It was a truly magical time bookended by the Opening Ceremony and Closing ceremonies and Paralympics, that represented all faces of Australian culture: from the moment Steve Jeffreys galloped into the Olympic Stadium on his Australian stock horse “Ammo” to the tune of The Man From Snowy River heralding the start of the Opening Ceremony to the procession of culture including sparkling Ned Kelly bushrangers,13-year-old Nikki Webster floating through the air transformed into an underwater scene, and a performance by John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John. In contrast the Closing Ceremony was a celebration of Australian fun and fabulousness featuring Kylie Minogue as a showgirl, Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee, Greg Norman hitting soft golf balls into the crowd, Elle Macpherson walking a camera float, and even the Bananas in Pyjamas.
As Paris did, Sydney too celebrated women at the Olympics during the Opening Ceremony, marking a centenary of female participation with a special final leg of the torch relay featuring Australian champions including Betty Cuthbert, Raelene Boyle, Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland de la Hunty, Shane Gould, Debbie Flintoff-King and Cathy Freeman, who lit the Olympic cauldron under a waterfall to mark the official start of the Games.
There appeared to be a cheeky nod to Sydney at the opening ceremony in Paris last weekend when champion French champion runner Marie-Jose Perec lit the Olympic hot air balloon at the end of the opening ceremony. Marie-Jose was Cathy Freeman’s arch rival who famously fled Australia and withdrew from the Olympics just 48 hours before their 400m final in Sydney. Cathy once confessed said thought she would have run faster had she been able to race Marie-Jose in Sydney.
Sydney was, of course, Cathy’s Olympics. Cathy had already been named Young Australian of the Year in 1990 and then Australian of the Year in 1998, so by 2000 when she qualified for the women’s 400m at the Sydney Olympics, the obsession with her had hit fever pitch.
There are moments in history that people always remember where they were. Cathy Freeman winning gold at the Sydney Olympics on September 25, 2000, was one of those moments. For me, I was lucky enough to be in the Olympic Stadium that night and watching Cathy cross the finish line to win gold and become the first Australian Aboriginal person to win an individual gold medal is a moment I will forever be grateful for witnessing live. The deafening roar of the crowd of 110,000 people who jumped to their feet in unison and the immediate collective euphoria still makes me smile.
In that one moment she brought the entire country together in celebration and reconciliation, and of absolute national pride. Cathy epitomised everything Australia aimed for, while also encompassing the Olympics motto: Faster, Higher, Stronger, Together. As Cathy said in her documentary Freeman: “Everybody was just so at one together … it’s like we were the only people who existed in the world”.
That’s how it felt to be at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
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