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Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the twenty sixth of September. I'm Lucy Tassel.
I'm beliefit Simon's.
Twenty five years ago today Australia woke up in the aftermath of one of the greatest gold medal races of all time, Kathy Freeman's win in the four hundred meters. They goes up, the guy takes the lad looks up, grows away from Graham and Mary. This is a famous victory.
I'm made, never said performance.
It was the undeniable high point of the Sydney two thousand Olympics Games that changed the city and set a high bar for other cities to follow. On today's episode, we're taking a walk back in time to the year two thousand, explaining how the Games came to Sydney, bringing you some of the highlights, and discussing its last legacy. But first a quick word from our sponsor.
Now, Lucy, I don't remember the game. So I'm twenty eight, freshly twenty eight and gray birthday. But yeah, I don't remember the games. I was too young. I must have been two or three years old. Yes, good Mas. Do you remember it?
I remember little bits. I remember making an Olympic torch out of white cardboard and read an orange cellar phane.
That's an amazing memory.
You must have been also three four four four freshly four because I lived not that far from Home Bush where the games were taking place, and I remember waving it on the side of the road as the torch relay went by. Lucy. And I also remember I was taken to see the wheelchair basketball at the Paralympics. So those are my Olympic memories.
Good game, Yeah, I guess I remember watching it, That's all I remember.
But then there are other things that happened during that game that have kind of become memories for me from having watched them over the years.
Yes, I feel like I remember Kathy Freeman, but I don't.
But I've just seen that footage so many times.
Exactly growing up also in Sydney, as we did. I know, I've spent a lot of time in my life in and around Sydney Olympic Park going to concerts. Most of the time.
It's hard for me to.
Imagine now actually that until twenty five years ago, basically that area really didn't contain much. Yeah, so interesting, and I think it's interesting that that is something that that development is something that was pitched when Sydney began its bid to host the Games, and the fact that Sydney hosted the Games was such a big deal at the time.
I feel like it's still a big deal now. How does a city come to host the Olympics.
Yeah, cities have to submit a bid. Back in the mid twentieth century to the late twentieth century, it was
very competitive. Countries would compete against each each other. They would nominate cities to be able to host the Olympics in the Paralympics, and typically those bids would be carried out six or seven years ahead of the Games to give cities enough time to build up all the infrastructure, and they would put together these packages explaining why they would be good at hosting it and present it to the International Olympic Committee. And sometimes it would take many
different tries. So, for example, Los Angeles attempted to host the Games or submitted bids many many times before they eventually won the nineteen eighty four Olympics and Paralympics. And it's true for Sydney to plans to host the Olympics in Sydney were being molled as early as the nineteen seventies actually, which is a long time before our eventual successful bid. Over the years, Australia put forward a number
of cities to host the games. Brisbane and Melbourne, which had hosted the nineteen fifty six Olympics.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, that was a big, big deal for Australia back in the day, so hosted them in nineteen fifty six. And then in the eighties Australia was like, do you want Brisbane? Do you want Melbourne? Those bids ended up going to Barcelona and Atlanta. But we got third time lucky in nineteen ninety three when Sydney successfully bid for the two thousand Olympics and Paralympics. And so what does
the city need for a successful bid? The list is not that long, but everything on the list is incredibly involved. You need places to host events. You need pools, running tracks, tennis courts, beach volleyball courts, gymnasiums, velodromes, shooting ranges, archery ranges. Like when you think about the vast number of Olympic sports, and it's often changing. For example, obviously Paris hosted the Olympics last year, but the surfing competition was held in Tahiti,
which is a French territory. So you need to be able to host all of the different events. You need housing for the athletes and the parer athletes. You need hotel rooms to house the thousands of tourists and journalists and officials that descend on your city for the Games. You need a stadium that's big enough for the parade of athletes at the end of the opening ceremony and for major events. And you need transport to get everyone
to and from and parking. There's so many different things that are all really expensive and involved to put together.
And often the cities don't actually have those facilities, but they say to the Olympics Committee that they will build them in order to host the Olympics, which was the case with Sydney. So for example, we had the transformation
of Sydney Olympic Park. We also had things like the rowing Center being set up in the city's west, things that would if Sydney were to ever bid for the Olympics again, we could say we already have this infrastructure, which is why you might see some cities hosting the Olympics multiple times, like La La exactly, London, Paris, those are the only ones, Oh, Tokyo, that's another one. Yes, and then you also need to present all of these things or your plans to achieve these things to the
International Olympic Committee. Sydney's bid in nineteen ninety three was a forty minute presentation that also included a speech from an eleven year old schoolgirl who described Sydney as a friendly city where it doesn't matter where you come from.
I know, so sweet. And another way that you can appeal to the International Olympic Committee is financially. So John Coates, who is a very important member of the Sydney Olympic Games Committee, later admitted he had actually offered grants to two African nations in exchange for their support for Sydney's bid, so no money actually changed hands, but there was kind of a promise of support if Sydney's bid got up.
And of course we mentioned Kathy Freeman at the top of the episode. Yes, and obviously that's one of the great sporting moments in Australian history. What are some of the other highlights from Sydney two thousand before we.
Move on from Kathy Freeman. Two quick things. Her win in the four hundred meters that we played a clip of was Australia's one hundredth Olympic gold medal of the time I know, and it was the first individual gold won by an Indigenous Australian. After she won, she draped herself in the Australian and Aboriginal flags to do her victory lap, which actually put her at risk of disciplinary action from the IOC because athletes aren't meant to kind
of wear any flags other than their own countries. And she had done the same thing at the nineteen ninety four Commonwealth Games and she had been publicly and formally reprimanded for doing so.
Wow, but that rules still in place for.
The Commonwealth Games, no for the Olympic Games. Yes, However, I don't believe she was actually reprimanded after the two thousand Games. I mean, it was such an incredible moment and certainly at the time Prime Minister John Howard said for her to carry both flags was quote terrific and perfectly natural. So I think the kind of the vibe had shifted. Yes, But let's move now from the track to the pool, which is where Australia has historically shone.
Two major highlights for you here. The first involves a then seventeen year old rising superstar you might have heard of called Ian Thorpe. Yes, he was coming into his hometown games and his first Olympics carrying the hopes of a nation on his extremely broad shoulders. His biggest test was actually set for the first day of swimming competition at the Olympics, where he was facing his first ever Olympic race and the men's four by one hundred meter
freestyle relay. Adding to the pressure was the fact that Australia was going up against the USA, who had never lost the four by one hundred meter freestyle relay in the history of the event. They had never not won gold. In fact, American swimmer Gary Hall Junior also said ahead of the Games that he expected Team USA would quote smash Australia like guitars. Wow, that is a stri and aprinsum. We're talking about it.
Because it went well for Australia, yes, exactly, and it went better than expected.
So in Ian Thorpe's heat. His first Olympic race, he set an Olympic record, that's in the four hundred meter freestyle. That night he swam that race even faster to break a world record and win gold. And then just an hour later the four by one hundred meter relay began. Michael Klym set a world record one hundred meter swim
in the first two laps for Australia. But then going into the last two laps, Ian Thorpe actually slipped a little bit behind Gary Hall Junior as they were going into the very last lap, the last fifty meters, and I'll let you listen to what happened next.
Cooper's coming out off the hall. They are aboutching spikes.
Now polop U turns with hole like that about top three meters to form Piper's over whol again oil and pop popch.
And corn popper, the hole pop gavis one. The drama is so dramatic, it's yeah, it gives me chills.
I can't deny it. It gives me chills. Before we move on from the pool, I've got one non Australian highlight to share with you. It comes to us from the tiny West African nation of Equatorial Guinea, not known for its swimming success. I think I know this story. I bet you do.
Is it that the swimmer came last and everyone was clapping?
It's like that. Okay, everyone did clap, Yes, it was clapping involved, There was involved.
Eric Mussambani was representing Equatorial Guinea in swimming. He had learned to swim eight months earlier.
Wow.
He arrived at the Games on a wild card entry awarded by the International Olympic Committee, and he was the only person in his heat for the one hundred meter freestyle, so not last, but the only person in.
The pool close close. He was last, but he was also first, one of one.
Actually, he had never swum the length of a fifty meter Olympic pool before. He'd had actually never seen one, so you can only imagine how intimidating it would be to swim that in front of a crowd. Slowly, as he swam his two laps, the crowd at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Center began to figure out what was happening back that he really was literally quite literally out of his depth, and they began to really cheer, and when he finally made it to the end. The crowd
just exploded. Yeah, it's a very kind of special moment.
Now that is the Olympics, but we also hosted the Paralympics. Yeah, what were some of the highlights of the Paralympics in two thousand.
The Sydney Paralympics were extremely successful, not just for Australia but for the Paralympic Games. The Sydney Paralympics were the first to sell more than a million tickets overall in the pool. For Australia, Chevon Peyton picked up six gold medals and broke six records, which is just astonishing. On the track, para athlete Luis Sauvage won two golds and a silver. It was her final game and she went
out with a bang. And then she's actually since gone on to coach Madison de Rosario, who is also a para athlete, who matched her feet of two golds at the same games in Tokyo in twenty twenty one. Overall,
Australian power athletes picked up one hundred and forty nine medals. Wow, I know, it's so it's simply so many, and we topped the medal table for the first time at the Paralympics, I know, and overall more than three hundred records were broken across the whole Paralympics, including it was the record for the most para athletes competing at a Paralympics ever.
So it was really like an amazing Paralympics. And honestly, reflecting on all of this, I just thought, Wow, Brisbane twenty thirty two has a lot to live up to.
I was going to say.
Hearing how successful we were at both the Olympics and the Paralympics, I know, it makes me so excited for Australia to host the Olympics and the Paralympics again, which Brisbane will be doing in twenty thirty two. That's right, although I'll say it's at a very different time for the Olympics, the Paralympics, the Games, the culture around them has really shifted and changed, I would say in terms of.
It not being as big of a deal anymore.
It's not that it isn't as big of a deal. It's just that all of the things that I described, the kind of size of the undertaking becomes increasingly difficult for cities to take on. So Brisbane was the only city to bid for the twenty thirty two Summer Olympics and Paralympics. Interesting that had happened in the past, but
not particularly frequently. There's also the case of the twenty twenty four Olympics and the twenty twenty eight Olympics, which were Paris and la respectively, were awarded at the same time. So and Brisbane was even the Olympics in twenty twenty one. So there's really like countries are getting more and more of a lead time to plan to set up.
There's also protest.
Movements against the Olympics, including one in Los Angeles that protest group argues the games were decided without public consultation, won't be sustainable and won't actually benefit the city of La over the following years. In Brisbane at least, there have been disputes over how much money will be spent in the city and what infrastructure will actually be built
and who will foot the bill. But one thing I know for sure about the Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics is that it's going to be so nice to have a games in our time zone, in our time zone, that's right, because the Paris ones we were having to stay up all night to watch anything. I was up at midnight watching the rugby sevens learning what rugby sevens was. I'm excited for that to happen in primetime.
Yes, well, Lucy, thank you for taking us down that trip back in time. You are our in house historian and our in house sports editor. That's so you're really combined to those two talents for this amazing explain that. Thank you so much.
Thanksville, And of course, if you are interested in more sport news, you can sign up to our sport newsletter. Yes, we'll put the link in the episode description.
Yes, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily os. We'll be back this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, enjoy your Friday.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigol people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.