DATED INFORMATION - Archive Only

On top of the success of Australia's athletes in Olympic and Paralympic sporting competition, the Sydney 2000 Games broke numerous other Australian, Olympic, Paralympic and world records.

Medal Standings
Australia won a record 58 medals (including 16 gold) at the Olympic Games and 149 medals (including 63 gold) at the Paralympic Games.

Attendance figures - Olympic Park
Day 8 of the Sydney Olympic Games (Saturday 23 September) smashed the day attendance record for Sydney Olympic Park. A total of 400,345 people attended Sydney Olympic Park for events on that day. Before the Games, the biggest previous record was 187,000, set on Easter Monday 1998.

More than 5.5 million people attended Sydney Olympic Park across the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Ticketing
Sydney 2000 set a new Olympic record for ticket sales, with more than 87% of available tickets sold across Sydney and interstate venues (football). Sydney venues sold more than 91% of available tickets. The IOC has confirmed this breaks the previous record for ticket sales of more than 82% set in Atlanta.

Some 6.7 million tickets were sold nationally and 6 million tickets to Sydney venues.

For the Paralympics, ticket sales totalled 1,108,914 including 884,885 day passes and over 224,000 reserved seating tickets including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

Transport
The Olympic and Paralympic Games resulted in Australia's biggest ever transport operation. Rail, bus and ferry trips and passengers all reached record levels.

More than 4.472 million people travelled to Sydney Olympic Park over 19 days of the Olympic Games (16 days of competition plus the Opening Ceremony and two dress rehearsals). The total comprised 3.38 million rail passengers and almost 1.1 million passengers on the 13 Sydney Olympic Park bus routes. An additional 1.5 million people travelled to venues not in Sydney Olympic Park.

More than 1.1 million people travelled to Sydney Olympic Park during the Paralympic Games. This included Australia's biggest ever group travel operation, with about 360,000 people travelling to the Games in organised school and other groups.

The Olympic Games involved Australia's biggest-ever rail operation. There were 29.5 million trips on the CityRail network over the 19 days of the Olympic timetable, compared with 13.8 million under normal conditions.

The Olympic Games also set a new record for passengers on Sydney Ferries in a single day. A total of 80,300 people travelled on ferries on Sunday 24, eclipsing the previous record of 80,000 on Australia's Federation on 1 January, 1901.

Preparations for the Olympic and Paralympic transport operation included 17 transport test events, which recorded a total of 3.9 million public transport passengers. When this is added to the totals for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, it means more than 9.5 million people travelled on public transport to Sydney Olympic Park in events coordinated by the Olympic Roads and Transport Authority (ORTA).

Countries and Athletes
199 countries (200 including independent athletes from East Timor) participated in the Sydney Olympic Games, with athlete numbers totalling 11,000.

122 countries (123 including independent athletes from East Timor) competed at the Sydney Paralympic Games, making them the largest Paralympic Games ever. The 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games held the previous record of 103 countries. The record 122 countries pushed the population in the Paralympic Village to 6,943, comprising 3,824 athletes, 2,315 team officials and 804 technical officials. The Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games were larger than the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games and twice the size of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics in terms of number of athletes.

Marketing and Sponsorship
The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Licensing program was the most successful in the history of the modern Olympic Games, selling more than $420 million in retail products since 1997. For the first time in Olympic mechandising history, Olympic Stores sold the Olympic Games merchandise range throughout Australia and at several international airports throughout the world.

For the Paralympics, sales of merchandise at the Superstore and venue outlets reached in excess of $2.8 million.

Catering
Sydney Olympic Park experienced record spectator sales during the Olympics of the following items:

• Beer (10,000 cups a day)
  
• Coke (70,000 bottles a day)
  
• Water (3000 bottles a day)
  
• Ice-cream (4000 a day)
  
• Pizza (2000 a day)
  
• Seafood baskets (2000 a day)
  
• Hot dogs (3000 a day)
  
• Hot chips (3000 cups a day)

Volunteers
Sydney's Olympic Games benefited enormously from the assistance of more than 46,000 volunteers with an extremely low attrition rate of approximately 2 percent. Another 15,000 volunteers gave their skills to Sydney's Paralympic Games. Overall 5 million hours were given by volunteers to Sydney's Olympic Games. In the seven years leading up to the Games, 500,000 hours were given by volunteers in part-time roles. A total 59 percent of volunteers were under the age of 45 and 20 percent under 25 years of age (most were university students undertaking volunteer work relevant to their prospective career). Some volunteers were between 70 and 80 years of age. A total 53 percent were female and 47 percent male volunteers.

The Volunteers Parade on October 5 was Sydney's biggest ever public march, with more than 50,000 people taking part in the parade and tens of thousands cheering them on.

Public Communication and Media
The Olympic Games attracted 17,500 accredited print and broadcast media. Some 350 media conferences were held at the Main Press Centre during the Olympics.

The Sydney Media Centre at Pyrmont was designed for non-accredited media. During the Olympic Games it recorded more than 5,300 guests, including accredited and non-accredited media personnel and VIPs.

Media telephone inquiries were serviced by the Olympic Communications Centre (OCC), which operated 24 hours a day for the duration of the Games. The OCC produced and circulated 141 media alerts and releases relating to the Olympics.

During the Paralympic Games, the Paralympic Communications Centre operated for 18 hours a day, seven days a week. It produced and circulated 92 media alerts and releases.

From September 1 to October 30, Sydney 2000 placed 360 advertisements relating to the Olympics and Paralympics in newspapers (207) and on radio (153). These advertisements included commuter and spectator messages as well as information about road events and signage.

As part of a detailed public communications plan, Sydney 2000 produced a wide range of Games-related publications, including the Spectator Guide and the Access Guide. Some of these publications involved major print runs. For example, a total of one million Spectator Guides were printed and 1.8 million Olympic Neighbourhood brochures were printed and distributed. These guides and brochures were also distributed through the GamesInfo web site.

Broadcasting
The Sydney 2000 Olympic Games were broadcast in more countries and territories than any Olympic Games in history. 220 countries televised the Sydney Games, compared with 214 countries for the Atlanta Games and 193 countries for the Barcelona Games.

Internet
The Sydney 2000 Games wrote a new chapter in internet history. The official Olympic site, www.olympics.com, had more than 9 billion hits during the course of the Sydney Games. This surpasses the previous record of 634 million hits set at the 1998 Nagano Games.

The gamesinfo web site, which provided details of NSW Government services supporting the Games, achieved more than 1 million hits per day during the course of the Sydney Games. This made it the most successful web site ever put together by the public sector in Australia.

The Paralympic Games set a new benchmark in video streaming, with the public able to see 100 hours of Paralympic competition via WeMedia's video streaming service on the internet.

Users in 103 countries logged in to see the video streaming broadcast. The official web site, www.olympics.com, attracted 300 million hits during the Paralympic Games.

Construction of Venues
Sydney set a new world record by completing construction of its permanent sporting venues for the Olympic Games months earlier than any other host city. All but one of Sydney's permanent sporting venues for the Games were completed in 1999, more than eight months before the Opening Ceremony.

The Ryde Aquatic Leisure Centre, which was added to the original construction program in 1997 following the addition of women's Water Polo to Olympic competition, was the last of the permanent sporting venues to be completed. It was finished in April 2000 - five months before the Games.

Removal of Venues
Sydney 2000 is minimising waste by recycling or reselling temporary building materials and facilities used at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The single largest temporary Olympic facility, the 10,000 seat Bondi Beach Volleyball Stadium, was completely removed from Bondi Beach on October 27, five days ahead of schedule. This fulfilled an earlier promise by Sydney 2000 to return the beach to normal by the end of October.

Olympic Athletes Village
The Olympic Village was described as the best ever by athletes and team officials at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Olympic Village is the world's largest solar suburb. All 665 houses have solar electric and solar water heating units on the roof. This will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the village by some 7,000 tonnes a year.

1.4 million meals served at Athletes Village
Athletes at the Olympic and Paralympic Village devoured more than 1.4 million meals. One million meals were served at the Olympic Games, with silver medallist in the women's triathlon, Australia's Michellie Jones, served with the millionth dish in the Dining Hall on 28 September. The most popular dish on the Olympic menu was char-grilled Tasmanian salmon kebabs.

Athletes at the Paralympics consumed more than 420,000 meals, with prawns on the barbecue the most popular dish.

Environment
Sydney was the first Summer Games host city to provide a comprehensive commitment to the environment. The Environmental Guidelines for the Sydney Summer Olympic Games contain more than 100 commitments based on the concept of ecologically sustainable development. The commitments have been achieved in all aspects of the planning and staging of the Games. Significant achievements include:

• 92% reduction in construction waste during village and venue construction, through waste recycling schemes.
  
• 50% reduction in requirement for drinking-quality water at Sydney Olympic Park, through Australia's first large-scale water recycling plant for urban use. More than 2,500 toilets at SOP use recycled water for flushing. The use of recycled water and planting of local native plants reduce the site's demand for drinking-quality water.
  
• the recycling or composting of waste and rubbish collected at Olympic and Paral ympic sites. This was achieved through special recycling bins placed around Sydney Olympic Park and at other venues.

IOC Co-ordination Meeting
The daily IOC Co-ordination meeting chaired by President Samaranch set a new world record of its own on Wednesday, September 27, sitting for only eight minutes.

Record Temperature
Sydney turned up the heat during the Olympics, with Friday 29 September the second hottest September day on record. It reached 34.5 degrees, just short of the record 34.6 degrees set in September 1965. The minimum temperature recorded at SOP was 10 degrees on September 17 (the typical minimum for that time of year).