Share
Clip description
Melissa Gainsford-Taylor, guest newsreader for day 15, describes to Roy (John Doyle) and HG (Greig Pickhaver) the atmosphere in the stadium from an athlete’s perspective. World-renowned Australian soprano Yvonne Kenny sings a hymn of praise to the athletes made popular by The Dream.
Curator’s notes
A big part of the charm of The Dream lay in the fact that it was not all about Roy and HG cracking funny jokes. They were willing and even eager participants in the immense good humour and goodwill that was such a strong characteristic of Sydney 2000, significantly the last Olympic Games to be held before the tragedy of the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. Here they are totally engaged, as is their audience, in Gainsford-Taylor’s account of what was in fact a loss in race terms, but clearly a never-to-be-forgotten experience in human terms.
Opera singer Yvonne Kenny, who sang the Olympic Hymn at the opening ceremony, farewells some of the lesser-known athletes who became heroes to audiences of The Dream. Prominent among these is swimmer Eric Moussambani (nicknamed 'Eric the Eel’) from Equatorial Guinea, who had never even seen an Olympic-sized swimming pool before arriving in Sydney. He won his heat of the 100 metres freestyle in 1:52.72 mainly because the two other competitors were disqualified for making a false start.
Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands subsequently set a world record of 47.84 seconds to win the gold medal in the event, but as the crowd understood and the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, once pointed out, ‘What counts in life is not the victory but the struggle; the essential thing is not to conquer but to fight well’.
Eric the Eel’s very funny but equally moving event can still be found on YouTube, along with Roy and HG’s commentary, as can most of the other events glimpsed in the footage accompanying Kenny’s song.
