Sydney 2000: Die Olympiade
Die Jahrtausend-Spiele
The Millennium Olympics in German
Also see our English-German Sports Glossary
with Olympic and other sports terms.
Freitag, den 15. September 2000 war der große Tag! On that day the opening ceremonies (Eröffnungsfeier) in Sydney, Australia presented die XXVII. olympischen Spiele (the 27th Olympic Games) to the world.
The last Olympiad to be held “down under” was in Melbourne in 1956. The last German Olympics were the infamous 1972 Games in Munich. (The Germans wanted Berlin to be the site of the 2000 Olympics, but they lost out to Sydney.) Of course, the Melbourne and Munich Games were non-Internet events. The 1996 Games in Atlanta did have a Web presence, but the Olympiade 2000 in Australia was the first to have truly extensive coverage on the Internet—both official and unofficial.
From Friday, September 15 to Sunday, October 1 Sydney was the main focal point of the world attention. (In reality, these are the Spring Games rather than the Summer Games in the southern hemisphere.) But if you watch the Olympics in the US, the focus will be primarily on the American athletes. In Japan the emphasis will be on the Japanese point of view, in Germany on the Germans, and so on. If you want to see the “real Olympics,” you'll have to sample the coverage from various nations.
And that's the beauty of the Internet. In the not-so-distant past it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to read or view foreign coverage of the Olympic Games, and any German-language Reportage in English-speaking countries in particular. Although media coverage of the the Sydney Games will be heavy wherever you live, they will be covering it from the “local” angle. But on our special Olympic links page we show you where and how to follow the Olympics in German (and English) via the Internet. While live Web video from Sydney was banned (see below), we did find a live Olympic news ticker in German. Most German-language newspapers and magazines also offered detailed Sydney 2000 coverage online.
Unfortunately, the extensive Olympic Web coverage did not include live streaming video. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has put severe limits on non-television broadcast video coverage, even going so far as to hire a firm to monitor any violations of their Internet video ban. The NBCOlympics.com site had exclusive rights to any video clips online, but even they had to delay video coverage until a day after the events. Television broadcasters around the world, including German and Austrian networks, have Olympic live video rights, while all TV broadcasters are allowed to show delayed video clips of 30 seconds or less. However, they are not allowed to show the video clips on the Web! (We link to a German article on the controversial Web video ban, if you want to learn more.)
But there's a lot of other Olympic coverage on the Web, including a special German site for the visually impaired (Sehbehinderte). (The IOC was sued over its failure to optimize its own official Web site for the blind.) If video is rare, there are still many online opportunities to listen to Olympic coverage in German. One of the best German Olympic sites I found is actually intended for use by teachers in Germany. The Lehrer-Online site has wonderful Olympic Minipacks with historical and other background info that anyone would find interesting. We've also listed some specific media sites with Olympic coverage, but you may wish to browse our News/Nachrichten and other news pages for more possibilities. First, though, take a look at the Olympic links on the next page!
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