Posted October. 01, 2000 19:05,
¡°See ya in Athens in four years.''
The 2000 Sydney Olympics, the first sports festival of peace and harmony in the new millennium, closed Sunday in a gala ceremony at the Australia Stadium, ending the hectic 17-day competition. The next Olympics will be held in Athens, Greece in 2004, the venue of the first modern Olympics in 1896.
In the Sydney Olympics, in which a total of 16,000 delegates from 200 countries took part, Korea won eight gold, nine silver and 11 bronze medals to finish 12th in the overall medal standings.
Korea failed to crack the top ten in the medal standings for the fifth consecutive time since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. However, it achieved the second best result among Asian countries, beaten out only by China, which was ranked third. The Sydney Olympics was especially significant in that the South and North Korean delegates marched hand in hand during the opening and closing ceremonies under the Korean peninsula flag to show the world that the Korean people are one.
North Korea won one silver and three bronze medals for 60th place, while the United States retained first place with 39 gold, 25 silver and 33 bronze medals.
In the final event of the games, the men's marathon, Korean favorite Lee Bong-Ju, the silver medallist in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, managed to finish with a time of 2 hours, 17 minutes and 57 seconds for 24th place, as he failed halfway through the speed contest. The gold medal went to Gezahgne Abera of Ethiopia, who recorded a time of 2:20:11.