Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games
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| Host city | Sydney, Australia | ||
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| Motto | Performance, Power and Pride | ||
| Nations participating | 121 + 2 "Independent Athletes" | ||
| Athletes participating | 3881 (2891 men, 990 women) |
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| Events | 561 in 18 sports | ||
| Opening ceremony | 18 October | ||
| Closing ceremony | 29 October | ||
| Officially opened by | Governor-General Sir William Deane | ||
| Paralympic torch | Louise Sauvage | ||
| Paralympic stadium | Stadium Australia | ||
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The 2000 Paralympic Games were held in Sydney, Australia, from 18 to 29 October. In September 1993, Sydney won the rights to host the 2000 Paralympic Games. To secure this right it was expected that the New South Wales Government would underwrite the budget for the games. The Sydney games were the 11th Summer Paralympic Games, where an estimated 3,800 athletes took part in the programme. They commenced with the opening ceremony on 18 October 2000. It was followed by the 11 days of fierce international competition and was the second largest sporting event ever held in Australia. They were also the first Paralympic Games outside the Northern Hemisphere.
This was the last edition of the Paralympic Summer Games which was run independently of the Summer Olympics, although efforts to unify the two events had already begun at that time and some areas of both such as the Olympic Village and the operational areas were merged for the first time.
At the beginning of his candidacy for the Olympic Games, the city of Sydney showed no interest in hosting the Paralympic Games. But in 1993, a few months before the final performance in Monaco, Adrienne Smith, a sporting inclusion activist and also the executive secretary of the newly founded Australian Paralympics Federation, along with Ron Finneran, the Federation President lobbied to ensure the Paralympics were part of Sydney’s bid for the 2000 Olympics and underwritten by the Federal and State Governments. They also insured that the paralympic athletes would have the same treatment, the same conditions and the same support as their Olympic counterparts. Something that until then was unprecedented and would become a point of no return in the Paralympic Games.After the win, Smith commented that, “We couldn’t go public because if we did it would have ruined the Olympic bid. We had no acknowledgement of financial support from the government until the day of the bid in September 1993.
The games was estimated to cost AUS$157 million, with the NSW Government and Commonwealth Government contributing AUS$25 million each. The Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) contributed $18 million, within the bid estimates. The Sydney Paralympic Organising Committee (SPOC) entered into a Host City contract with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), which outlines the SPOC’s obligations in hosting the Paralympic Games. To cover the costs, other revenue was raised via sponsorship and ticket sales. The 110,000 seat Stadium Australia was completed three months early in February 1999, this stadium was funded mainly by the private sector at an estimated cost of $690 million, the Government contributed $124 million to this project. Though there is no budgeted profit, if any profit is made though the games, repayment to the Federal and State Governments is the first priority. In October 1998, governing bodies of the Paralympics including the SOCOG and the Sydney Olympic Organising Committee initiated a call for volunteers. An estimated total of forty-one thousand Australians answered this call, non-including those sourced from specialist community groups.
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