Games end amid fanfare
By John Powers, Globe Staff, 10/1/2000
SYDNEY -- CELEBRATE, RECUPERATE, DO IT AGAIN, urged the ad on the No. 380 bus to Bondi Beach. Why not? After 17 days, folks hereabouts were just beginning to party. Open another Foster's and pass the prawns, mate.
These were the Olympics nobody wanted to have end. Not International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch, who'll never preside over another. Not the athletes, who were treated like Greek gods from the moment they stepped off the plane. And not Eric The Eel, the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who just made the wall before he went under -- and found himself adopted by this island land.
These were the Nawarries (i.e. No worries) Games, which surprised even the hosts themselves. From the day in 1993 when Samaranch told the world: "And the winner is . . . Sydney," the Games seemed a planetary annoyance to the populace.
The costs seemed exorbitant, the revenues iffy. Both of Australia's IOC members got caught up in the Salt Lake bidding scandal. There were times, even after the Olympic cauldron was ignited, when the citizenry wanted organizing committee chief Michael Knight (and his toothy grin) hung upside down from The Coathanger (i.e., the Harbour Bridge).
But once the torch reached the suburbs, the Sydneysiders embraced these Games with extraordinary zeal. They bought a record 91 percent of the tickets, and 46,000 Mick and Sheila Dundees volunteered to drive buses, monitor metal detectors, and say a cheery G'day to grumpy journalists at the breakfast hall.
It was, Samaranch said, "a perfect organization," and in the wake of the worst scandal in Olympic history, the beleaguered Lords of the Rings needed that.
The Games had been wracked by politics and doping during the past quarter century, but this time the IOC had fouled its own nest and soured the Olympic ideal. Samaranch had lobbied openly for Beijing before the balloting (Sydney won by only two votes). So how ironic was it that Sydney stepped in as savior?
There was a cosmic symmetry to these Games, the first south of the equator since the Melbourne Games in 1956. Everybody wanted to come to Oz, it seemed.
And Oz, which doubted that it could handle thousands of Peruvians, Turkmenians, Ethiopians, and Monegasques dropping by for a fortnight, found that it relished the planetary spotlight. "Since the opening ceremonies, there has been a magical feeling in Sydney," Knight said at Sunday's closing ceremonies.
And the athletes and guests, who staggered off the plane confused about which day (or season) it was, found Sydney a magical place. They snapped photos of The Coathanger and the Opera House. They waded into the Bondi surf. They nibbled the kangaroo prosciutto, quaffed the Victoria Bitter. They checked out Paddo and Darlo. They said "bewdy." And if they found themselves up a gum tree, the locals said Nawarries and went out of their way to help.
All that goodwill paid off in the medal standings, where the Aussies enjoyed their best games ever, winning 58 and placing fourth behind the Yanks, Russians, and Chinese.
Cathy Freeman, who lit the cauldron during the opening ceremonies, won the 400 and put her fellow Aborigines, who feared they'd be marginalized at these Games, at center stage. Thorpie and Susie each won golds in the swimming pool, where the men's freestyle relay dunked the Yanks for the first time ever. The Hockeyroos, the only homegrown team that didn't pose for its own nude calendar, were gilded, too.
The Aussie fans were models of decorum and sportsmanship, especially after the obnoxious U-S-A, U-S-A chanters who rubbed the world's face in their victories in Atlanta. They cheered for all gold medalists, even those who beat their own. They even cheered for Gary Hall, after he'd predicted (correctly) that his teammates would smash the Aussies like guitars.
These Olympics were a model for the new millennium and the new Olympic century. Sydney had vowed that its Games would be for the athletes and they were all of that. Its village was the most luxurious ever and the food (a million meals were served) was gourmet quality (char-grilled Tasmanian salmon kebabs were the No. 1 choice). "These are the athletes' games," British rower Steve Redgrave declared, as officials tried to hurry him to the awards dock to collect his fifth straight gold. "They can wait."
What was the rush? It was spring in New South Wales (imagine a mid-May day cloned 17 times) and nobody was in a hurry to confirm flights home. Samaranch enjoyed these Games so much that he came back from Spain after his wife Bibis died shortly after the opening ceremonies.
"They could not have been better," said the lord of Lords, who proclaimed them the best Olympics ever. He always says that (except for flawed Atlanta, which "were indeed most exceptional"), but this time nobody disagreed.
These were the best and biggest Games -- more than 11,000 athletes from 199 countries plus East Timor, the breakaway Indonesian province. But Sydney brought them off like they were just another Mardi Gras (the organizers even had drag queens along with the Olympic priestesses at the closing ceremonies).
When Samaranch formally declared this global beach party closed and had the "flyme" switched off inside Stadium Australia, there was a disappointed "awwwwww" from 100,000 throats, who'd just figured out this taekwondo business.
Do it again in 2004? Nawarries, mate. How about next week?
