Sydney's Story Lines
The prospect of 10,000 athletes competing in dozens of games for two weeks on the other side of the world can make the 2000 Olympic games a little tricky to get a handle on.
With so much going on, it'll be hard to pay any attention to any but the highest-profile sports and the marquee athletes, the Marion-Jones-and-Michael-Johnson-caliber stars of Sydney.
Johnson, a double gold medal winner in the 200 and 400 at the 1996 Atlanta games, is slated to run only the longer event in Sydney. The world record-holder is an overwhelming favorite to defend his 400 title and anchor the 1,600 relay.
Jones is trying to win gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters, 400 and 1,600 relay, and the long jump—an unprecedented goal.
Their performance at the games—along with those of the powerhouse U.S. women's soccer team, sprinter Maurice Green and other big names—will be captivating to see. But there are other athletes and separate storylines to keep an eye on in Sydney.
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Triathlon, women's weightlifting and taekwondo will all be medal events for the first time at the Sydney games.
Australians are particularly excited about the women's triathlon. Australian women filled the first five places in last year's World Championships and have won eight of the last nine world titles.
But only three women could make it into the Olympic team and, after months of appeals and court actions, they were Michellie Jones, Nicole Hackett and Loretta Harrop. Jones, long regarded as the queen of the sport, has a bulging bag of titles ranging over the last 10 years, including back-to-back world titles in 1992-93, and at the age of 31 is still the world number one.
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The new faces at Sydney's games are trying sometimes with limited success—to fill old shoes. A prime example is this year's U.S. men's basketball unit, which failed to impress many at a pre-games press conference.
Flirting with the all-time Olympic record for use of the phrase "it's a tremendous honor," the U.S. team did nothing to dispel the notion that they are boring and nobody cares about them, as they did care about the 1992 team, a star-studded crew that included Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and John Stockton.
This team features the likes of Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Antonio McDyess, Ray Allen and Allan Houston. It begins Olympic play Sunday night against China. Other preliminary opponents are Italy, Lithuania, New Zealand and France. Many of the best teams from the rest of the world, including Yugoslavia, Australia and Canada, are grouped in the other bracket.
The Americans might not have a compelling game until the Olympics are almost over. But, to their credit, none of the players was seen yawning.
"Our goal is to step on the floor every night and get the job done," said the team's biggest star, Vince Carter.
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Just hours before the opening ceremony Friday, Games organizers called in the army to help solve glitches with bus services.
Around 100 extra soldiers would arrive in Sydney Friday to top up the hundreds of military personnel who are already involved in the games, said a spokesman for organizing committee president Michael Knight.
At least some of the extra soldiers would be used as bus drivers on Olympic routes, the spokesman said, on customary condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, organizing committee chief executive Sandy Hollway said unfamiliar and complicated bus routes were still causing problems for drivers recruited from areas outside Sydney, and called for an extra 500 civilian volunteers to help out-of-town bus drivers find their way around the host city.
Transport problems at the Sydney Games intensified Wednesday when dozens of drivers quit the Olympic bus service, saying they were angry about working conditions and poor organization of timetables.
Australian Olympic team officials have asked athletes to be patient with transport delays, despite admitting some problems were "unacceptable."
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For example, there's a reason the games were to be opened by Governor General William Deane, the representative of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, and not the Queen herself or Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
Deane was chosen to open the games after the queen was ruled out for the job during a divisive national debate last year over whether or not Australia should retain her as its head of state or drop her and become a republic.
In a referendum, the country voted to keep the queen, but the victory was credited largely to divisions among voters on how to elect a president to replace her. Republican sentiment remains strong in the country.
Look also for anti-globalization protests, division between the U.S. and International Olympic Committee over doping, displays of unity between the two Koreas and other examples of sport and politics mixing up a tasty late-summer cocktail.