This week Sydney has been celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games, which opened on the 15 September 2000. This steel sculpture of the logo sits outside the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre at Darling Harbour, which was one of the venue sites. The plaque explains the story behind it: “The Millennium Athlete” logo for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, was unveiled on 14 September 1996 by some of our greatest Olympians. This sculpture represents the promise made in Sydney’s Olympic bid to host the Games that would be dedicated to the athletes of the world. The running athlete symbolises, the spirit of Sydney, the Olympic torch bearer and Australia’s indigenous culture. The twelve metre mast supports nearly two tonnes of steel suspended six metres above the ground on a total of 120 metres of special high-tensile woven steel cable.
beautiful structure! very unique!
ReplyDeleteIt was a fun two weeks of competition.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great scupltural reminder - unlike the one Manchester commissoned for the Commenwealth Games - it was demolished last year.
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful sculpture and a terrific capture as always, Jim! I always enjoy the interesting information you include, adds to the photos! Have a great week!
ReplyDeleteSylvia
How long did you have to wait until no one was in the background of the shot? Good one.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great sculpture. I asked myself the same question as Michael: Where are the people? 2000 was an exciting time for Sydney.
ReplyDeleteFascinating sculpture. It doesn't seem like 10 years since the Sydney Olympics.
ReplyDeleteto the untrained eye, some of them look like boommerangs.
ReplyDeleteWe keep hearing the trouble in Dehli. I hope politics or anything else won't affect the commonweath games.
Great pictures indeed ! Must be interesting to see what future genearations think and do with it. Please have a good new week.
ReplyDeletedaily athens
Jim, it is always interesting to see the remains of the Olympic spotlight. This space looks to have excellent maintenance.
ReplyDeleteNice photos.
Michael & Bill, this one certainly was a challenge. I visited a few times over the last few weeks but was always thwarted by people in my shots. Then, last week I went there on a weekday morning when there wasn't a convention on and even though I waited around for a while found a few moments when the flow of people stopped.
ReplyDeleteAnn, that's exactly what they are. The athlete is made up of boomerangs, which is the symbolism of Australia's indigenous culture.
Beautiful decorations for the celebration. Sculptures are always interesting with hidden meanings.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful sculpture! Simple, symbolic, graceful, unique -- all around marvelous!
ReplyDeleteThat's just awe-inspiring. Your beautiful city has the most amazing sculptures -- thank you for sharing them.
ReplyDeleteGood one ... I like the way you have captured it.
ReplyDeleteThe Sydney Olympics where the best ever. Sydney did Australia proud.
ReplyDeleteIf «Louis» ever got himself in such a pose at this 'athlete', it would take a millennium for the chiropractor to get him out of it!
ReplyDelete;-D
The sculptures are so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThe sculpture is fantastic. Great shot.
ReplyDeletegreetings
I went to darling harbour last weekend and I saw afresh your work. I love it ! The engineer in me could not work out how you got the tension in the cables with no visible turn buckles. I sat for a while thinking about..only to resolve to try to find the information about your work on google and then see if I could contact someone to tell me how it was done. I'd love to know...maybe you have some photos while it was being installed ?. Richard
ReplyDeleteI don't have any photos myself but I'm sure there would be some out there somewhere. These days you would be assured of plenty of photos on the internet but since this was installed back in 2000 when the internet was in its infancy, it might be harder to track them down.
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