On September 23, 1993, in 101st summit of International Olympic Committee held in Monaco, the cities of Berlin, Manchester, Beijing, Istanbul and Sydney were nominated to host the 2000 Games. Sydney was selected to hold 300 athletic events in 28 fields: 168 men’s events, 12 women’s events and 12 mixed events.
Throughout the history of the new round of Olympic Games, this was the first time that women competed in modern pentathlon, triathlon and Taekwondo. It had been predicted that 10,200 athletes from 199 countries would participate in the Games. This number included 6,200 men (60%), 4,000 women (40%) and 5,100 referees, coaches and other associates or officials.
Fifteen thousand journalists had officially reported to the Olympic authorities in addition to a number of technical officers. It was estimated that over 3.5 billion people all over the world would watch Olympic Games on TV. For broadcasting 3200 hours of reports, about $1,330,600,000 were paid from September 15 which marked the beginning of the Games. Nine million tickets were sold, five million of which to Australians. This was the highest number of tickets a host country had ever sold for Olympic Games.
Twenty-Seventh Olympic Games were run by 5,000 volunteers who continued to serve during Paralymic Games. For the first time, all the participating athletes were accommodated at separate buildings and had access to sports fields or gyms within 30 minutes, using all installations free of charge.
Australia is a large continent: From east to west it is 4,000 km long while stretching 3,700 km from north to south. Sydney is a historical city with an area of 1,700 square km which is two times larger than Rome. Sydney’s residents are very interested in sport competitions. After 1992 Games, in every street you could see a sign which read: “Welcome to Sydney Games 2000”.
In western Sydney, canoeing competitions were held while the eastern part of the city hosted more sports fields including: beach volleyball, soccer, road cycling, yachting, and triathlon. Other events held in Darling Harbor included tennis, volleyball, fencing, weightlifting, wrestling, judo, etc.
Australians have always been very keen to host the Olympic Games. Since 1956 in which the Games were held in Melbourne, this was the second time Australia was being widely acclaimed again. Many experts including Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC head, believed that the third millennium games were the best in 104 years of the Olympic history.
In Sydney Games a total of 916 medals were awarded to athletes of which 310 were gold, 299 were sliver and 316 were bronze. The medal tally for some countries was as follows:

Eleven countries from among the 199 participating countries each won a bronze medal, the last of which was Sri Lanka. In fact, 80 countries could get 916 Olympic medals, with their share ranging from 97 to one medals.
This is while the athletes from 119 countries returned home without any medals won, but with lots of memories of friendly competitions in mind. It should be reminded that 52 years ago in 1948 Olympic Games in London, the Iranian team participated in freestyle wrestling, weightlifting, boxing, basketball and shooting, but returned with only one bronze medal won by the late Jafar Salmasi. This may seem insignificant, but was an unforgettable start for this country.
One amazing thing about Sydney Olympic Games 2000 was that the world records for track and field events were not broken by men or women. Some of the world record holders reached top ranks again but with smaller achievements.
It is interesting to know that in the men’s high jump, Javier Sotomayor from Cuba who holds the world record with 2.45 meters, won just a silver medal in Sydney after he jumped 2.32 meters! And Sergey Bubka from Ukraine who is a record holder in pole vault with 6.14 meters, could not reach the finals.
In swimming competitions, on the contrary, 10 records were broken both by men and women; Australia, the United States and the Netherlands got 28 new records in swimming. Also in weightlifting, a total of six new records were achieved by men and women.

Iran in Olympic Games, Sydney 2000: Iran participated in freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, weightlifting, judo, cycling, boxing, athletic, horse-racing, Taekwondo, canoeing, shooting, swimming and table tennis. One athlete competed in each field of horse-racing, athletic, shooting and table tennis. Iran was very hopeful to win medals in freestyle wresting, weightlifting and, to some extent, in Taekwondo.
In freestyle wresting only Alireza Dabir in the division of 58 kgs could achieve championship and won the gold medal. In other weight divisions, Abbas Jadidi, Mohammad Talaie, Amir Tavakoli and Amir-Reza Khadem fought quite bravely but were not lucky enough to stand on the podium.
In the finals, Dabir defeated Yevgeny Buslovic from Ukraine and stood on the first step. His victory from among other well-known and experienced wrestlers was very noticeable.
In weightlifting, no other expert, but the Bulgarian coach Ivanov, could predict that Iran could reach a remarkable position. Unfortunately, Shahin Nasirinia in 85 kg division who was the world champion in Athens Games, was hurt in an accident and had to quit. Mehdi Panzvan and Hussain Barkhah could not achieve anything but in high weights, Kourosh Baqeri, Hussein Tavakoli and Hussein Rezazadeh were able to shine more than what was expected. In fact, they amazed the whole world with their success.
Hussein Tavakoli, the amazing man of 105 kg division is 22 years old. He lifted 190 kg in the snatch discipline and 235 kg in clean and jerk by which he was able to defeat his Bulgarian rival Alan Tesagayev by 2.5 kg and struck the gold. This was the first gold medal won by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hussein Rezazadeh, in the snatch discipline, lifted 212.5 kg and in clean and jerk part, 260 kg, and with a total of 472.5 kg, Rezazadeh could break his world record of 206.5 kg and made the total world record. Ronny Veller from Germany was second with 467.5 kgs.
When Rezazadeh was asked by the daily bulletin of Olympic Games about the sport he would like to learn, he answered, “Diving” and when he was asked what was his favorite music, he replied, “Turkish music”.