Australia at the 2000 Summer Olympics Australia at the 2000 Summer Olympics Australia was the host nation for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Australian athletes have competed in every Summer Olympic Games. 628 competitors, 341 men and 276 women, took part in 270 events in 34 sports. Australia won its first Olympic gold medal in the sport of archery in Sydney. Simon Fairweather defeated all six archers he faced, including a comfortable seven-point victory in the final. Men Women The Australians' second appearance in the Olympic baseball tournament resulted in the team moving up one place in the rankings, from seventh to sixth. They defeated
Olympic Games Evangelos Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games. Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games. The stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875. Thirty thousand spectators attended that Games in 1870, though no official attendance records are available for the 1875 Games. In 1890, after attending the Olympian