The Gambia at the 2000 Summer Olympics
The Gambia National Olympic Committee was recognized by the International Olympic Committee on 1 January 1976. The nation boycotted the first two Summer Olympic Games held after their recognition. They boycotted the 1976 Summer Olympics over New Zealand's participation, and joined a United States-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Therefore they did not make their Olympic debut until the 1984 Summer Olympics, and have participated in every Summer Olympics since then. Sydney was their fifth consecutive appearance at the Summer Games. The 2000 Summer Olympics were held from 15 September to 1 October 2000; a total of 10,651 athletes represented 199 National Olympic Committees. The Gambian delegation consisted of two track and field athletes, Pa Mamadou Gai and Adama Njie. The flag bearing duties at the opening ceremony were performed by Njie.
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.