From Oliver Holt in Sydney
Sydneysiders found a name for the final day of the Olympic Games. They called it "Sad Sunday" and when they woke up this morning after the last hurrah of the closing ceremony, it was almost as though a grieving process had begun. The newspapers printed tips on how to beat the post-Olympic blues, the television showed pictures of litter strewn across Olympic Park, paper bags hopping pathetically in the wind. The rest of the world headed for the airport.
Some found it hard to let go. Pedestrians wandered around the city centre still wearing the accreditation badges that they had used to gain access to events. Out on the harbour, some men lazing on a yacht yelled out the “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” greeting that has become the most familiar refrain of the past fortnight, at the passengers on the Manly ferry. Throughout the Olympics, that has been a prompt for a raucous collective reply of “Oi, Oi, Oi”. Nobody bothered yesterday.
It was as if a spectacular electric storm had passed and the last crackles were dying away. Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee, had said it was the best Games ever held and Australia loved him for that. It was hard to argue with him. Sydney staged them almost flawlessly. The transport system coped admirably, the venues were gleaming new and full of atmosphere and most of all, the hosts were as welcoming as it was possible to be.
Only the most curmudgeonly failed to be impressed by the warmth the Australian people showed towards their visitors. It was noted time and again that while Atlanta, which has come to be a byword for the antithesis of the Olympic spirit, organised an Olympic Games for the United States, Sydney gave it back to the world. The desire to be loved and appreciated as a nation is ingrained deep in the Australian psyche and that desire was sated during the Games.
The most touching aspect of all was that 70,000 volunteers gave their time for no financial reward to facilitate the running of the Games. They were everywhere, checking passes at the security gates to enter the stadium, keeping the spirits of the passengers high as they queued for trains and buses, helping visitors who looked as though they might be lost if they saw them on the street. Their actions built up a fund of goodwill that carried the Games along on an emotional high from the first day.
The other thing that made the Games great was the quality of the competition. Some of the contests felt like sport in its purest, most exciting form, the kind of sport that lifts you off your seat and makes you yell and cheer for men and women you may hardly have heard of before. Ian Thorpe’s final leg of the 4 x 100 metres swimming relay, when he chased down Gary Hall Jr to win the gold medal for Australia was a case like that. It was intoxicating stuff.
There were events that felt as though they were imbued with something more than just sporting significance. If Nike’s claim that Cathy Freeman is "changing the world 400 metres at a time" is hyperbole, all of those fortunate enough to see her become the Olympic champion a week ago, carried along on a wall of sound, felt that she was making a difference. Even if it was only in a small way, her achievement could but help the healing process between the Aborigines and the rest of Australia.
There were other breathtaking moments. The men’s 10,000 metres, when it seemed for a split second that Haile Gebrselassie was fallible after all and then the thrill of wonder when he surged past Paul Tergat with his last stride before he crossed the line. There was the almost unbearable tension at Penrith Lakes when it seemed that the Italy coxless four might be about to deny Steve Redgrave his achievement of a rowing gold at a fifth consecutive Games and the relief when Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, James Cracknell and Tim Foster hung on.
Moments like that will never be forgotten in the minds of those who witnessed them. Nor, at the other end of the scale, will the travails of Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who looked as though he was about to go under at the end of his 100 metres freestyle heat. It took him longer to swim that distance than it did for Pieter van den Hoogenband, the swimmer of the Games, to complete 200 metres but somehow Moussambani captured that elusive quality, the Olympic spirit. Last week, his picture appeared on the front page of one newspaper, a huge grin creasing his face as he surfed in the foam off Bondi Beach.
For all the celebrations and the intoxication, though, it would be foolish to pretend that there was not a dark side. C.J. Hunter, the American shot putter who also happens to be the husband of Marion Jones, the US sprinter, emerged as the pantomime villain because it was revealed that he had failed four drugs tests this year. He was not even competing in Sydney but because of his connection with Jones, he made the headlines.
Worse than the fact of his guilt, though, was the sad way in which US Track and Field attempted to protect him. They would not confirm that he had tested positive, they would not even confirm that C.J. Hunter was the man in question. What sort of a message does that send out? Protection is a luxury afforded the innocent, not to a man who has been exposed as a serial drug offender. As the Games wore on, it became obvious that the US was out in front in the race for the gold medal for hypocrisy in drug-testing, choosing not to publicise instances when their athletes test positive.
They were not alone. There were reports of Bulgarian weightlifters leaving giant pools of urine in an arrivals lounge at Sydney airport as they tried to clear their bodies of all traces of drugs before they were tested. The authorities at the Olympic Village had to install needle bins in some sections of the athletes’ housing because discarded syringes were posing a health threat to cleaning staff.
There were more problems like that, too. Plenty of them. More than enough to remind us that they were far from isolated incidents. Only the most naive, though, had thought that there would be no problems, no drug busts. The problem is still a drain on the credibility of the Games. There were some results that cast serious doubt on the hope that the best man or woman had won.
For all that, Sydney delivered what the optimists had dared to hope it would. It was not without problems but in its spirit and its exhilaration, it dragged the Olympic Games back from the brink and began to force light into the darkness.
