The Olympic Gold Standard
One of my favourite yarns from the Sydney Olympics concerns the thin blue line painted onto the roads as a guide for runners in the marathon. In the middle of the night, as most of Sydney slept, someone armed with a brush and a can of blue paint decided the route was in need of a detour - and redirected it into a nearby pub.
I have just been compiling a report about the matchless success of the Sydney Olympics, which were famously described by the then President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, as the most successful in the history of the modern Games. 
That diverted blue line helps lead you to the answer. Neither Sydney nor Australia took the Games too seriously. John Morse, then head of the Australian Tourism Commission, put it rather neatly. The organisers realized that the games were not only a 16-day sporting competition but an excuse for a 16-day party.
From the very outset, the organisers wanted to imprint their country's personality onto the games: its laid back approach to life; its sense of larrikin irreverence and fun.
They were helped by the army of volunteers, who cracked jokes and launched into song to entertain spectators waiting in lines and queues. They were aided by the "live sites" dotted around the city, which were originally intended as a way of dispersing spectators and thus preventing the transportation system from being overloaded, but which took on a life all of their own.
Sydney provided the most fabulous of backdrops, and the simple fact that the Games took place a year before 9/11 meant they were not swamped with overbearing security.
A sense of fun combined with a sense of inclusiveness. There was a strong belief that the Olympics could have a unifying impact on a country where 24% of its resident population was born beyond Australian shores. The organizers did so by creating - and then liaising closely - with a Multicultural Advisory Committee, drawn from Australia's ethnic communities. It worked a treat.
The organising committee also spent years drumming up support in the bush and the Outback. Cleverly, they targeted kids, knowing their infectious enthusiasm would transmit to their parents - as, indeed, it did.
In the Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman, the Games also had the perfect poster girl. On the first night, she lit the Olympic flame; on the 11th in the 400m, and it vested the Sydney Games with an even greater historical meaning.
The Sydney Olympics has been described as Australia's Coming of Age: the country held up a mirror to itself and very much liked what it saw. Sandy Hollway, the CEO of the games, talks of how the opening ceremony dealt a fatal blow to what was labeled "the cultural cringe", an ingrained sense of inferiority. Samaranch described the opening ceremony as the "most beautiful" he had ever seen.
In a setting where metal provides the currency of success, for 16 days in September 2000 Sydney set the gold standard for the rest of the world.
I'd love to hear your memories of the Sydney Games, or what you think was the meaning attached to them. And why were they the best?
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