Cape Verde at the 2000 Summer Olympics
The Comité Olímpico Cabo-verdeano (Olympic Committee of Cape Verde) was recognized by the International Olympic Committee on 1 January 1993. Their first Summer Olympics were the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where they sent 3 athletes, all in athletics. As of the 2018, Cape Verde has never won an Olympic medal. The 2000 Summer Olympics were held from 15 September to 1 October 2000; a total of 10,651 athletes represented 199 National Olympic Committees. Sydney was their second appearance at an Olympic Games; the island nation has never participated at a Winter Olympic Games as of the 2018 Winter Olympics. The Cape Verdean delegation to Sydney consisted of two track and field athletes, Isménia do Frederico and António Zeferino. Do Frederico was chosen as the flag bearer for the opening ceremony.
Bids for the 2000 Summer Olympics
Berlin was an early front-runner, hoping to cap the decade of German reconstruction and reunification by hosting the first Games of the new millennium. But the support of its bid was marred when anti-Olympic protesters marched through the city just four days before the final vote in Monaco claiming that the games would take funds away from further reconstruction efforts. Manchester's bid book was considered strong, but with much regeneration in the city needed, and with a promotional video shown to the IOC depicting London landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge, the bid was criticised heavily by the British media sighting that the city's bid was 'suffering from an identity crisis'. The impending announcement of the host city came down to a head-to-head between Sydney and Beijing with Manchester, Berlin and Istanbul ranked outsiders. With China's suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 still fresh in the minds of many in the West, Human Rights Watch launched a major media campaign to influence members of the International Olympic Committee to vote against awarding the Games to Beijing on human rights grounds. The campaign was one of the earliest efforts to claim that Olympic hosts should meet human rights tests.