Sydney 2000 - Getting the Games of the Millennium | Must See Moment (09.24.1993)
Copyright (c) 1993 International Olympic Committee
The Olympic Games ushered into the new millennium as Sydney stages the XXVII Olympiad from 15 September to 1 October 2000, and it marked the second time, after Melbourne 1956, that Australia (and especially the continent of Oceania) had hosted this sporting spectacle.
In its selection process, Berlin was an early front-runner, hoping to cap the decade of German reconstruction and reunification by hosting the 2000 Games. But the support of its bid was marred when anti-Olympic protesters marched through the city just four days before the final vote in Monaco, claiming that the event would deny funds to further domestic reconstruction efforts. Manchester's bid book was thought strong, but with much regeneration in the city needed, and with a promotional video shown to the IOC depicting London landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge, the bid was criticized heavily by the British media sighting that the city's bid was 'suffering from an identity crisis'.
For Beijing's bid, meanwhile, with China's suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 still fresh in the minds of many in the West, Human Rights Watch launched a major media campaign to influence IOC members to vote against awarding the Games to the Chinese capital on human rights grounds. The campaign was one of the earliest efforts to claim that Olympic hosts should meet human rights tests.
But so far, that focus for the 2000 Games was all about Australia. The AOC originally contemplated either Melbourne or Brisbane (after failing to win the 1992 Games) as their preferred bidding host cities, but Sydney gained popular favor amongst then-AOC President John Coates, and others, having never been a host city.
The impending decision of the host city came down to a head-to-head between Sydney and Beijing, with Manchester, Berlin and Istanbul being ranked outsiders. And finally on 24 September 1993, at the 101st IOC Session in Monaco, as when IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch stepped up onto the microphone, it was announced that Sydney went superior, winning the bid with 45 votes than Beijing's 43, thus landing the Olympic Games to Australia for the second time in the country's history, after Melbourne played their part in 1956.
