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On 25 September 2020, the ABC released a documentary film to mark the twentieth anniversary of Cathy Freeman's gold medal victory in the women's 400 metres at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Media interest in Freeman's victory still erupts periodically, most recently, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary. This article revisits Cathy Freeman's historic gold-medal-winning performance in order to ponder the lost promise of reconciliation. At the time, and still today, Freeman's victory is overwhelmingly celebrated as more than just an athletic feat; it is also lauded as a victory for reconciliation. Rather than trying to determine the extent to which Freeman's race did bolster reconciliation, or even whether it contributed to reconciliation at all, this article instead analyses the metaphors, rhetoric and images through which Freeman's victory was represented as an act of reconciliation, and what this tells us about how reconciliation plays out in the Australian context. In particular, it argues that the complex ways in which Freeman's victory were represented, and continue to be understood, reveal a widespread desire to be free from the burdens of history by projecting the work of reconciliation onto Freeman herself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to determine the mechanical variables that are related to successful post-flight somersaulting performance of the Roche vault. The 23 Roche vaults performed during the 2000 Olympic Games were filmed by a 16-mm camera operating at 100 Hz. The 2-D direct linear transformation technique was used for spatial calibration. Approximately 60 frames were digitized per vault. The method of Hay and Reid (1988) was used to develop a deterministic model to identify the mechanical variables that govern linear and angular motions of the vault. Correlational analysis was used to establish the strength of the relationship between the mechanical variables identified and the judges' scores. Significant correlations indicated that the higher judges' scores were negatively related to five mechanical variables and positively related to seventeen variables in the model. The normalized horizontal displacement of body center of mass (CM) from the knee grasp to the peak of post-flight was the best single predictor of the judges' score and accounted for 50% of variation in the judges' score. Finally, the landing point deductions and the official horizontal distance of post-flight collectively accounted for 86% of the variance in the judges' scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volunteers have become essential to the delivery of sport events. Megaevents, such as the Olympic Games, rely on a large number of volunteers for the successful running of the event, some of whom travel to volunteer. This study investigates the motives of a group of people who volunteered at the Sydney Olympics as they prepared to travel to volunteer at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. Four key motives were identified: (a) nostalgia, (b) camaraderie and friendship, (c) Olympic (i.e., subcultural) connection, and (d) sharing and recognition of expertise. The motives identified distinguish event volunteer tourists from other volunteer tourists and from other event volunteers. It is suggested that the recruitment, retention, and reacquisition of event volunteers will be served by understanding the motives and experiences of repeat event volunteers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the competing visions of urban planning that influenced newly reunified Berlin's highly contested bid, undertaken between 1990 and 1993, to host the 2000 Olympic Games. The governing city parliament coalition, mainstream media, and private corporations embraced the Games as the key to Berlin's future. The Olympics would draw investors, reunify infrastructure, foster a common "Berlin" identity among newly reunited Berlin's residents, upgrade borderland spaces and eastern neighborhoods, and boost Berlin's prominence as a global city. Alternatively, numerous protesters from both East and West, proclaiming their right to provide meaningful input into the uses of urban space, staged creative protest actions highlighting the negative social, political, and environmental effects of the proposed Games on Berlin and its neighborhoods. Ultimately, supporters and opponents diverged on the matter of who had the right to determine the use of urban space: the city government and private corporations or city residents who believed they knew best what benefited their own neighborhoods. In the end, Berlin lost its bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games. Nonetheless, creative resistance efforts designed to offer democratic alternatives to growth- and investment-oriented urban planning and to protect residents' rights to codetermine urban space, often emerging in response to planned mega-events and large development projects, persist more than two decades later, not only in Berlin but in other major metropolises around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Olympic Games is a major stimulus for increased tourism. In recent years, there have been greater calls for this and other mega-events to leave sustainable positive legacies for the host city, partly to offset the massive cost of hosting. To date, little consideration has been afforded to the role corporates might play in contributing to event legacies. This gap is compounded by the lack of research examining stakeholder engagement in legacy planning more generally. This paper adopts Holmes, Hughes, Mair and Carlsen's (2015) sustainable event legacy timeline to conceptualise how corporates through the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of sponsorship and employee volunteering can engage across the Olympic event planning cycle to generate volunteering legacies. Drawing upon a comparative study of the Sydney 2000 and London 2012 Olympic Games, tentative evidence of corporate engagement was noted but for the most part it was fragmented and CSR initiatives primarily focused on the immediate planning and delivery stages of the event cycle. The paper advances new knowledge of how volunteering legacies can be generated through the best practice engagement of corporates as key stakeholders involved in legacy planning and governance across the Olympic planning cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the elite sport legacies of hosting the Summer Olympics for China (Beijing 2008) and Australia (Sydney 2000). The classic organizational life cycle approach provides the conceptual framework for this retroductive study. The data for both cases are sourced from official publications, academic research, and documents from various government departments and organizations. Additional data are drawn from three semi-structured interviews with key Chinese stakeholders. The analysis provides clear evidence that governments and their stakeholders use the opportunities afforded by a home Olympics to boost Olympic performance. China and Australia experienced a similar four-phase pattern of elite sport legacy life cycle: start-up, growth, maintenance, and decline. Both countries also shared many similar policy and management factors throughout each stage. An increased awareness of the sequential nature of elite sport legacy can help Olympic host countries make a more informed decision about their long-term strategies for elite sport success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1993 Human Rights Watch, one of the two most influential human rights organizations in the world, launched a major campaign to derail Beijing's bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games. This article situates this highly publicized campaign in the context of Sino–US relations, the end of the Cold War, and the ‘victory’ of human rights as a global moral lingua franca. It argues that Human Rights Watch's decision to oppose Beijing's bid stemmed from its new post-Cold War focus on China combined with the organization's search for new ways to secure media attention and the funding that flowed from publicity. The campaign most likely swayed the International Olympic Committee's close vote in favor of Sydney. It also brought Human Rights Watch a windfall of favorable publicity among new audiences. The article argues that the campaign irrevocably inserted broad-based human rights considerations into the Olympic Games, decisively moving moral claims-making around the Olympics beyond the playing field. It also linked Human Rights Watch's moral legitimacy to US power in problematic ways and triggered a powerful anti-US backlash in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By reviewing Australia's project management history and outlining the rationale for analysis, this paper will identify and construct a competency model for managing an international project that is based in Australia. The components of the competency model are assembled using the method developed by Lynn Crawford. In addition to providing an analysis of the competency model, the paper discusses its application to an international project headquartered in Australia. The group focused on a case study titled, "The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games". This paper concludes by providing lessons learned from this project and underscores the importance of integrating competency models into other projects of this magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A variety of factors have contributed to China’s recent recovery in elite swimming in particular its success in the London Olympiad. The poor performance at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games was a ‘wake-up call’, which in conjunction with Beijing’s successful Olympic bid in 2001, opened policy windows prompting large-scale review and reform from which a broad range of ‘heavyweight’ policy actions were introduced and implemented. However, the road to recent success has been ‘bumpy’ during which there were other key events that have left an indelible imprint on Chinese swimming. Therefore, the multiple streams framework in general and the concept of policy windows in particular afford a theoretical gateway to structure policy analysis of elite swimming in China. Moreover, as a Western-derived theory the application of which to a sports context has been very sporadic, the multiple streams framework is evaluated regarding its applicability, or ‘compatibility’. Five semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders were conducted, accompanied by comprehensive document analysis of official documents and website information of associated sports-governing bodies and associations, and influential domestic and foreign media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport participation as a legacy of the Olympic Games (OG) has frequently featured as a component of the "legacy package" that government bodies and organizing committees promote to the local communities to gain support for the hosting of these mega-events. However, only recently increased sport participation has been explicitly included as part of a legacy plan in OG candidature files. This article examines the changes and development of sport legacy planning and implementation from Sydney 2000, London 2012, and Rio 2016. The three case studies confirm that sport participation legacies are only achieved if host governments engage the community, develop long-term strategies, and coordinate efforts between different government portfolios and with a range of relevant stakeholders. So far, there is limited evidence available to demonstrate that relevant government bodies have attempted to strategically leverage the Games with the purpose of developing a sport participa- tion legacy for the wider population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the volunteer legacy of a mega-sport event. An online, qualitative, open-ended questionnaire (n = 15) and in-depth interviews (n = 10) were administered to and conducted with Sydney 2000 Olympic volunteers to ascertain the legacies that exist at least 10 years after the completion of the event. The results show that the legacy of the Olympic volunteer experience includes the starting and/or rekindling of a volunteer career, the development of a unique set of skills and abilities, and nostalgia for the atmosphere of the Games with a special emphasis on the ideals of Olympism. The legacy has been perpetuated via formation of a group of volunteers soon after the Games as well as through the use of memorabilia along with sharing stories and expertise on the volunteer experience. The findings provide valuable insights for those seeking to recruit and retain volunteers as well as those who are concerned with developing event legacy strategies to leverage volunteer efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sydney is the Australian city that attracts the most global attention with its beautiful harbour, its iconic attractions of the harbour bridge and opera house. Tourists may leave Sydney with a complimentary view of Sydney’s public transport but the Sydneysider’s assessments of Sydney’s public transport system is often much harsher, especially if the journey requires travel beyond the immediate centre of the city. In Sydney, the reference point of what constitutes a functioning transport system is informed by the success of the transport system in meeting the needs of the participants and observers at the Summer Olympics of 2000. Changes to the transport system to provide more multimodal travel were supported by Sydneysiders and visitors and this paper analyses why this success has not been translated into everyday public transport. The paper identifies opportunities which still exist for Sydney to benefit from the success of these Olympics. These opportunities involve strengthening the opportunities for, and acceptance of, multimodal trips by the travelling public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games on the residential real estate markets of the host city during the bidding, pre-Olympic and post-Olympic periods. Design/methodology/approach -- This study uses a difference-in-differences model to analyze the transaction prices for all properties in New South Wales, Australia for the period from 1980 to 2007. Findings -- The paper finds that the impact on real estate markets varies across different suburbs in the host city and over time. The real estate markets of host suburbs experience substantially higher growth during the bidding and pre-Olympic periods but not during the post-Olympic period. However, the property prices in non-host suburbs in the host city increase at a higher rate during the pre-and post-Olympic periods but not during the bidding period. Originality/value -- This study offers insights into the long-term impact of the Olympic Games on host suburbs and non-host suburbs in the host city during different periods by analyzing a large longitudinal data set over a period of 27 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The Olympic Games' (OG) organisers typically hope that a diverse range of health legacies, including increases in physical activity and sport participation will result from their hosting of the OG. Despite these aspirations, the effects of the Olympics on physical activity levels remain to be demonstrated in large-scale population studies. Methods This study examined the short-term impact of the Sydney 2000 OG, using serial cross-sectional population physical activity surveys of Australian adults in November 1999 and November 2000. Random sample surveys of adults asked about physical activity participation, intention to be more active, and in 2000, response to the OG. Results There were no significant effects of the Olympics on physical activity participation among adult Australians, measured 6 weeks after the end of the Games. Total minutes of leisure-time physical activity did not change significantly between 1999 and 2000 (295-303 min/week), and the proportion reaching the recommended levels of 150 min/week did not change (56.6% and 56.8%, respectively, in 1999 and 2000). The intention to be active in the next month increased after the Games (adjusted OR 1.12, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.24), but was not associated with physical activity behaviour change. Conclusions The legacy of the OG may be apparent through new infrastructure and other urban improvements, but evidence of their influence on physical activity levels remains elusive. Without multiyear integrated and well-funded programmes to promote physical activity, the Olympic legacy of a more active community may remain more rhetoric than reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]