"Sidney is the world’s largest and most urbanized city. Its suburbs are spread out many kilometres. It resembles somewhat Los Angeles, but does not resemble… Los Angeles. Sydney has a centre, but wherever the Olympic games are held, the Harbour is still its heart" – you can read these words in the book "A Hundred Things to Know About Australia".

Perhaps, David Dale is much travelled as he compares Sydney to Los Angeles. We cannot compete with him in having visited so many cities all over the world. The only thing we will add is that Sydney is the 22nd city in the world and the 2nd city in Australia that has hosted the Olympic games. The games were held on the outskirts of Australia, as well as in its gulf and in its heart, the Harbour.

Sydney is indeed an Olympic city. It was evident throughout the entire city, including the abundance of Olympic circles. We could see the circles on flags, posters, on the beautiful bridge of the Harbour, on people’s clothes, faces and hairdos too…

Since attire was mentioned, I would note that at the opening ceremony of the Olympic games the Georgian delegation was dressed in the best international standard. Our sportsmen, dressed in clothes produced by tailors of the French company "Pier Badman", were led by a boy and girl dressed in the national costumes. Watching them filled us with pride as they walked on Sydney’s main Olympic stadium to the audience’s enthusiastic ovation.

We must admit, however, that although the march of our Olympic team was a cheering sight, in our hearts we felt concerned for their performance in the games.

We proved wrong!

It was not only us but others who also proved wrong. Who could have thought that Georgians would return from the Sydney Olympic games with six medals. The Sydney Valley seemed to be lucky for them. All the six medals were won by Georgians in the Harbour where the world’s best sportsmen in judo, weightlifting, boxing, Greek-Roman and free style wrestling competed against each other. Giorgi Vazagashvili, the judoist, was the first one who rejoiced our hearts; then were Giorgi Asanidze, the weightlifter, Akaki Chachua and Mukhran Vakhtangadze, both Greek-Roman style wrestlers, Vladimir Chanturia, the boxer and Eldar Kurtanidze, the free style wrestler.

Eldar was the first sportsman who became a twofold medal winner from independent Georgia. True, his medal, like the five other medals of his teammates, was bronze, but out of the 199 countries represented at the games, 119 could not make it to the pedestal of honour. As for the Georgian sportsmen, from the total number of medals won, they ranked 30th - 33rd among other medal winners. In total, Georgia left behind many countries that were, from territorial and population density standpoints, bigger and were, what is more important, economically stronger and more stable.

We could have had even better results if not the irony of fate with George Asanidze. In fact, he lost the gold medal because of a tactical mistake made by his trainers.  Although he lifted as much weight as the gold and silver medal winners, our favourite appeared to be heavier than the above two sportsmen, by some grammes …

Akaki Chachua whilst competing against the Russian sportsman in a semi-final was treated with such obvious bias by referees that it caused surprise even among Russians themselves…

Eldar Kurtanidze was not very far from reaching a final either, but he lost against the sportsman (Russian Agat Murazaliev) who had previously been defeated by him in many other competitions.  This time however, he fell for the bait of his rival’s provocative "feat" and…
… And the dream has been put off for four years…

Others also decided to shift their hopes to the Olympic games in Athens.

And still those who expected our sportsmen to win six medals in Sydney were overly optimistic. Our athletes have surpassed themselves.