2000 Summer Olympics
The 2000 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad and commonly known as Sydney 2000 or the Millennium Olympic Games/Games of the New Millennium, were an international multi-sport event which was held between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was the second time that the Summer Olympics were held in Australia, and also the Southern Hemisphere, the first being in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1956.
2000 Summer Olympics cauldron
The lighting of the Olympic Cauldron by wheelchair racer Louise Sauvage at the opening ceremony for the Sydney Paralympic Games on 18 October 2000 was another spectacle highlight. It was the culmination of another torch relay, but one that had commenced with a lighting ceremony at Parliament House, Canberra on 5 October 2000. Involving 920 torchbearers, each of whom carried the flame an average of 500 metres, it visited each Australian capital city by air. Then within New South Wales it travelled from Moss Vale through the Southern Highlands, Illawarra, Campbelltown, Penrith, Windsor, Hunter and Central Coast areas before heading to Sydney. Like the Olympic Torch Relay before it, the Paralympic Torch Relay succeeded in generating community and media support for the Games, with crowds in many areas and significant crowds lining the Sydney metropolitan route in the final two days of the relay.