Rock 'n' roll took over from pomp in Sydney

When the disco-dancing lifesaver bounded on the sand, the crowd at the Olympic beach volleyball match instinctively knew how to react.

When the disco-dancing lifesaver bounded on to the sand wearing only a pair of cherry red underpants, the crowd at the Olympic beach volleyball match instinctively knew how to respond.

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Instantly, 10,000 spectators leapt to their feet, flung their hands around the hips of the person closest to them and started a slow pelvic thrust that left little to the imagination.

It was a decadent display that could easily have been mistaken for an audition for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, yet this was just another day at the Sydney Olympics.

The pomp and ceremony that characterised previous Olympics was tossed aside during the 2000 Games, as wisecracks and rock 'n' roll took over.

Sydney's Olympics were a brilliant success by any measurement but the new standards they set had little to do with running, swimming and jumping.

The 17 days were a festival of clowning around where fun and good humour took precedence over gold, silver and bronze. Australians poked fun at themselves rather than boasting of their virtues to the outside world and the world lapped it up.

The party mood that engulfed Australia's largest city was infectious. One local commentator wondered if organisers had slipped Prozac into the city's water supply.

He was only half joking. Each competing athlete was given 51 condoms on their arrival at the Olympic Village but another 20,000 were shipped in when supplies began running low.

NATIONAL PRIDE

Hosting an Olympics is an anxious time for any city and Sydney was no exception. The mood in the harbour city leading up to the Games was one of pessimism, but organisers need not have worried.

The sense of national pride that followed the awarding of the Games in 1993 had been replaced by bitterness and anger fuelled by a year of ugly scandals and rows.

Accusations of bribery were still thick in the air after the Salt Lake City scandal and the Olympic ideals of fair play and sportsmanship had disappeared after it was revealed that organisers had secretly siphoned off the best tickets for rich individuals and companies.

At the same time, taxpayers were told the bill for staging the Games had blown up significantly from earlier forecasts and political rumblings were growing louder by the day.

But the doomsayers got it wrong as Sydney delivered what outgoing International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Juan Antonio Samaranch described as the best ever.

The crowds turned out in droves, the transport system operated smoothly and the city turned on its best for the visiting tourists with all-night parties at the aptly-named Darling Harbour.

The most poignant moment of Sydney belonged to Cathy Freeman, who won the 400 metres gold medal after lighting the Olympic Cauldron at the opening ceremony.

As Australia's most prominent Aboriginal sports person, Freeman was thrust into the country's 200-year struggle for reconciliation between blacks and whites.

As 100,000 flashbulbs lit up the Sydney night air to capture her moment of victory, Freeman tried her best to explain the significance of her achievement: "I've made a lot of people happy tonight, especially my family...the biggest smiles I've ever seen, and they're not even drunk, my brothers."

IRREVERENT MOOD

American sprinter Marion Jones won three gold medals on the athletics track, while Australia's Ian Thorpe and Dutchwoman Inge de Bruijn collected three golds apiece in the swimming pool to emerge as the biggest successes of the Games.

But the gold medallists were just a small part of the Sydney Olympics, where the irreverent mood embraced the losers just as much as the winners.

Eric Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea became one of the heroes of the Games by swimming the slowest race in Olympic history.

"The Eel" almost drowned trying to complete a heat of the 100 metres freestyle but his efforts made him an instant celebrity around the world.

An even more unlikely star was "Fatso, the fat-arsed wombat", a cuddly toy which featured on a television satire programme that became compulsory Olympic viewing every night.

Fatso trotted across the screen leaving golden droppings to commemorate magic Olympic moments and became such a hit with the athletes that some Australian swimmers carried him under their arms when they mounted the podium to collect their gold medals.

Sydney bid farewell to the world with a raunchy closing ceremony, dripping with more self-mockery, as everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief at how well things had gone.