Sydney Games off to a thunderous start

Sydney: With a thunderous roar of "G'Day!", Sydney welcomed the world Down Under on Friday to the first Olympics of the 21st century.

At an exuberant opening ceremony, 110,000 spectators warmed up with a chorus of "Waltzing Matilda" and then bellowed their trademark greeting round the giant arena.

A lone horseman galloped into the centre of Stadium Australia and cracked his whip, signalling the start of a show business spectacular by an awesome 12,500 performers from Aboriginal dancers to a 2,000-strong marching band.

As the music swelled up from the hit film "Man From Snowy River", the rider was followed in by another 120 stockmen clad in traditional Australian outback coats and hide hats.

They were aged from 15 to 77 and among them was "Crocodile Dundee" star Paul Hogan.

With pinpoint precision, they traced out the famous five rings of the Olympic movement before a huge banner proclaiming "G'Day!" floated down to the stadium floor.

Two years after the International Olympic Committee was steeped in scandal over corruption and cronyism, the Sydney Games give the IOC a chance to try to wipe the slate clean.

Sport has also been soiled by a string of doping scandals and the organisers hope sophisticated new drug tests will keep them one step ahead of the cheats.

The show had the crowd roaring with delight in the A$690 million ($380 million) stadium, whose arches mimic the majestic span of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The ceremony, on a chilly but dry spring night, marked a perfect opportunity for sports-mad Australia to showcase its diverse and extrovert culture on a global stage.

It kicked off the Millennium Games that will be watched by almost everybody on the planet with access to a television -- a staggering 3.7 billion people.

Sport's greatest show on earth -- seven years in the making at a cost of A$2.6 billion ($1.4 billion) -- has brought 11,000 athletes from 199 nations to Sydney, a melting pot of a city with immigrants drawn from around the world.

The athletes' parade was set to show how much that world had changed since Australia last staged a Games -- the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Spurred by the Olympic spirit of reconciliation, Cold War foes North and South Korea are marching under the same flag after half a century of enmity and division on their peninsula.

East Timor, one of the 20th century's casualties of ethnic conflict, sent a tiny team of just four athletes for the first time after voting last year to break free from Indonesian rule.

The ceremony was to conclude with the swearing of the Olympic oath and the traditional lighting of the cauldron. The flame will burn over Sydney throughout the 17 days of the Games.

A hot favourite for the ultimate accolade has been Betty Cuthbert, a triple gold medal sprinter at the Melbourne Games who is now wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis.

The torch was being run into the stadium after a 100-day trek across Australia which culminated in Sydney with one million people packing the streets to cheer the relay runners home.



(c) Reuters Limited.