We are coming to the close of our year-long look back at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Paralympics. In our penultimate episode of our Sydney 2000 Games history series, Jill takes a look at the Olympic rowing competition, specifically the women’s coxless pairs race, while Alison tries to decipher the fever dream that was the Olympics Closing Ceremony.
Achieving what’s never been done before
As we’ve found throughout the year, when we delve into each sport on the Sydney 2000 program, we find dozens of stories worth telling. Rowing at the Sydney 2000 Olympics was no exception, but Jill opted to focus on the women’s coxless pairs, specifically the team of Missy Schwen-Ryan and Karen Kraft.
These rowers won silver four years before at Atlanta 1996, but just after that race, Missy retired in order to donate part of her kidney to her brother. After a long recovery from the surgery, she felt the competitive drive again, called up her partner, and the two started another grueling Olympic campaign. It would be a struggle just to get to the Games, but then the competition would get more fierce.
Across the Pacific, another team was forming, looking for Olympic glory on home soil.
Across the Atlantic, a new crop of rowers was coming into their own, ready to start a dynasty.
And to the north were two of the best rowers in the world, ready to take on everyone.
Listen to our episode, then go and see how the race unfolds.
An Olympic Closing Ceremony like no other
The Closing Ceremonies are often more fun than the Opening Ceremonies. The Games are over, and the athletes and organizers are ready to party. At Sydney 2000, it was an unreal party from the very first seconds.
The show, called “A fond farewell from Australia,” was created by Ric Birch and David Atkins, and they did their best to incorporate so many amazing elements that you would not ever forget the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
One element the duo didn’t direct was the International Olympic Committee’s take on these Games. As he declared the Games over, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch did what he didn’t do at Atlanta 1996. He proclaimed Sydney 2000 the best Games ever. A nation–and world–agreed.
Watching the flame go out on the Sydney 2000 Olympics might’ve drawn tears, but the fearless creative team said, They’ll dry quickly because we’ve got Kylie Minogue! Fabulousity ensued, and the party raged on. Watch the full version here.
For a complete list of sources used in this episode, visit: https://tinyurl.com/sydney2000sources.
***Much like the American coxless pairs team, we’re also bootstrapping our way to the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Help us get to Milano Cortina so that we can bring you 32 days of daily episodes that will tell you what it’s really like at the Games. Tell us whether you’re a Milano or a Cortina and support the show today!***
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
417-Sydney 2000-Rowing and Olympic Closing Ceremonies
Jill Jaracz: [00:00:00] Hello Olympics and Paralympics fans, and welcome to another history episode of Keep, the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games, we are the show for you. I’m your host, Jill Jaracz joined us always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison. Hello, good day.
How are
Alison Brown: you? I’m not, I’m not saying that I’ve already embarrassed myself at least 10 times trying to sound Australian and I will not offend the Australian people anymore.
Jill Jaracz: yes. We are looking back at Sydney 2000 this year on our history episodes and all the wonder that Is connected with the best games ever as, IOC President Juan Antonio Samran said at the closing.
Alison Brown: But after we’ve done this now for, this is our 11th. Oh, our penultimate Sydney show. It’s kind of true.
Patron Shout-Out
Jill Jaracz: They were really good games. Uh, before we [00:01:00] get to our first story, we’d like to give a Patreon Paton shout out to Don Waylon.
Alison Brown: Oh gosh. Goodness gracious. We love Don.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. And I love this part of the year because we get to shout out our Patreon patrons at the, uh, show shout out level. and Don’s been a patron and a supporter of the show for a long time.
Alison Brown: I wanna say since like year two.
Jill Jaracz: Probably, probably. And he’s done a lot more for the show as well. he’s designed a lot of, great graphics for us as well.
So Don, we appreciate you and your listenership so much. If you’d like to get a, annual shout out on the show, you can find out more about that@flamealivepod.com slash support. Or if you need a, shout out earlier, we’ve got another way and we’ll tell you about that later on in the show. Teaser. Teaser.
Sydney 2000-Rowing
Jill Jaracz: All right, let’s get into Sydney 2000. I’m gonna do the last talk [00:02:00] about competition. That we’re gonna have for our history series, and I wanted to look at rowing and when we start splitting up the sports and doing our own research and you think you have one story and you find 25,
Alison Brown: I think that’s been the story of, of this year certainly was every event we looked at, 10 other stories jumped out.
Sometimes within the same event. And rowing. Rowing has a lot of events, so I’m sure you had to sacrifice a lot of stories.
Jill Jaracz: I did. I mean, I could have talked about Stephen Redgrave from Great Britain, the great Stephen Redgrave who said he was gonna retire after Atlanta, 19 96, 3 months later said, no, I’m coming back.
Then he switched from the pairs to the fours, and then he had an appendectomy. He injured his arm and was diagnosed with diabetes in 1997. he kept going, competed in Sydney, got his, fifth gold medal in the Coxless force [00:03:00] that gave him six medals overall, and he was the first British athlete to win five Olympic gold medals.
I could tell you about that. I could tell you. Yeah, no, no, I could. speaking of the British, I could talk about how Team GB won their first gold medal in the men’s eights since 1912.
Alison Brown: Really?
Jill Jaracz: Could have told you about that, but I won’t. I could talk about new countries participating ’cause we love new countries and Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Serbia, Montenegro, that’s one country at this point.
They all showed up for the first time. We love first medals. Could have talked about medals for Lithuania and Croatia, or the first ever gold medal for Slovenia.
Alison Brown: All of whom have continued to be a force in rowing.
Sydney 2000-Rowing-Women’s coxless pairs
Jill Jaracz: Right. But, but there was one other story that caught my eye and that was in the women’s coxless pairs.
And we’re gonna focus mostly [00:04:00] on one, one team, but I’m working on getting more on the others, but, but we’ve got one team and 1996. Reigning Olympic champion and Shuk Sani Marni McBean and her partner Kathleen Heel, said, we’re not doing the coxless pairs again. We’re gonna switch to the double skulls. So we were gonna get a new Olympic champion in 1996, and that could have been from any number of teams, but the final ended up being a race between reigning world champions, Megan still and Kate Schlater from Australia.
Alison Brown: Home team. We love that.
Jill Jaracz: And the boat of Missy Schwen and Karen Kraft, a relatively new pair from the USA also home team at this point. They teamed up in 95. They got silver at that year’s world champs. So we’re looking like an interesting race here. And in the 1996 Olympic finals, the Australians built up a 1.262 second lead at 1500 meters, at which point the Americans came racing back.[00:05:00]
They ran out of room. The Australians won gold by just 0.3, nine seconds, just a few feet, and gave them gold after winning gold.
Megan’s still. One of the Australians promptly retired. She left her partner Kate, to find someone else for the home games at Sydney, 2000 Mshe. Schwen also retired after Atlanta, but for a different reason. That’s because her brother Michael had a genetic kidney disease called I iga, nephropathy, nephropathy.
And by the 1996 Olympics, his kidney function was down to 10%. Did she give him a kidney? Well, they had, there were four of them in the family, four siblings. The other two could not donate. One was too young, one was not strong enough. But because Missy was so strong, her kidney was as big as a 230 pound man’s.
Alison Brown: You [00:06:00] know what I can tell you? I can tell you my kidney is definitely not that big.
Jill Jaracz: But leading up to Atlanta, nobody told Missy, Hey, you’re likely to be the donor. And the whole family came to watch her race. Even Michael who had to arrange to get dialysis while he was in Atlanta. So after she won the silver, she’s dealing with losing gold and the family was at lunch kind of celebrating as much as you could.
And Missy goes, Hey Michael, how’s the transplant process going? And that’s when she found out she was gonna be a kidney donor. So she skipped the closing ceremonies in Atlanta to start the process and did the blood work and everything right away. She did get to go to, the White House celebration and apparently like cornered Bill Clinton to get him to sign a Getwell card.
Good on her, right? not long after that. [00:07:00] Went to Chicago, had the transplant, she saved Michael’s life. He started feeling better immediately. Missy did not because Her abs were in incredible pain. They had to cut through her back muscles to get to the kidney. She had a 17 inch long scar on her abdomen.
She couldn’t walk very far without being wiped out, and had massive hormonal swings and experienced depression. It was a few more months before she could do pool workouts, like not swimming, a little swimming, but like running in a pool kind of workout. And, uh, she got, eventually got back on an ergometer, was really, really slow.
So slow that she said she covered it up so she couldn’t see how slow she was going.
Alison Brown: Oh, that’s heartbreaking.
Jill Jaracz: In 1997, Missy got married to Tim Ryan. also, uh. Australian native and also an elite rower. He had missed out on two Olympics. They were living in [00:08:00] California when she realized she wanted to row competitively again, try to get the gold, so she’s only 25 at this point.
I know.
Alison Brown: Why do I suddenly hear a music montage of training coming into this story?
Jill Jaracz: In January, 1998, she calls up her old partner, Karen, who was 28 at the time, said, Hey, do you wanna get back together? Karen said, oh yeah. And it was back to the grind, and this part of their journey involves going to Dallas to train.
Then they trained in Australia the winter ahead of the Olympics. And they are not part of the national team at this point either. So they are self-funded at home. They have jobs at Home Depot.
Alison Brown: Oh, old Home Depot
Jill Jaracz: program. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when they were in Australia, they did not have the right kind of visa that they could get a job.
So they are really. You know, bootstrapping it here. They did not [00:09:00] qualify for the world champs in 1999. But they did qualify for Sydney 2000, and they had better times than they had at Atlanta, thanks to better strength that they had developed in the weight room. So things are looking pretty interesting here, and they developed a different strategy for Sydney 2000.
They, instead of doing the whole Catchup game, they decided to go out and lead first and force everybody else to catch them instead, however. We’re dealing with other teams that are also in the mix here. The favorites for this race were Canadians, Emma Robinson and Theresa Luke, who were the reigning three time world championships Australian Kate Slatter was now paired with Rachel Taylor and it could be almost anybody’s game here.
We also have a team from Romania who is doing very well. they are.
GoGet Damien and Ana Inga, gna, and they are predicted to win here by, at least by Sports Illustrated. [00:10:00] So we this, yeah,
Alison Brown: that’s the kiss of death.
Jill Jaracz: So at Sydney, we’re in the heats People are looking at the Canadians and the Australians and the Americans, but two other teams just stormed a victory in the heats.
We had Romanians, they beat the Americans by over two seconds.
Alison Brown: Ooh.
Jill Jaracz: So they got the automatic qualifying spot in the final. And guess who goes to the
Alison Brown: better you than me trying to say that word.
Jill Jaracz: Then in the next heat, south Africans, Helen Fleming and Colleen Osmond beat the Australians and Canadians by like three seconds. That’s
Alison Brown: an eternity.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So every favorite in this race, besides the Romanians, they have to go to the repartage to get into the finals.
So he won. Americans led the entire way. They take one of the qualifying spots, the other spot in that heat goes to Canada. In he two, the Australians and [00:11:00] Germans managed to grab the last two spots in the final. So we’ve got the finals, they take place on September 23 at nine 10 in the morning. Sunny day little wind making ripples across the Sydney International Regatta Center and Penrith.
And it, it was a really beautiful day. the wind was, uh, so, you know, they’re facing backwards and the wind’s kind of at their back. So, hopefully that wasn’t too much of, an intrusion on how things went. But, in the finals. Ryan and Kraft are Americans. They kept to their strategy.
They led for most of the race and they’re like a half a boat ahead for most of the race. But it’s a 2000 meter race
Alison Brown: and you can run out of space to win or run outta space to catch up. Right.
Jill Jaracz: Australia’s just a little bit behind them for most of the race. But after 1000 meters, the Romanians started to search and in the last 500 meters, they caught the Americans and pulled the head and [00:12:00] they went on to win.
Americans are really starting to fade at this point. Australia picks them off too. Oh, so they nip the US at the line to take the silver by 0.04 seconds. Americans win bronze. They’re full two seconds behind gold at this point. Canadians. They finish fourth, nearly three seconds off the podium, which, That’s kind of an eternity in racing. So gold goes to Romanians, Damian, and ot. Silver goes to Taylor and Slatter from Australia and bronze to Ryan and Kraft from the USA. Besides predicting the gold medalists correctly, sports Illustrated also predicted the bronze medalist correctly. They had put Canadians and silver, and the Canadians finished fourth.
So
Alison Brown: swap those out. That’s probably one of the best predictions they’ve ever done.
Jill Jaracz: So Missy Schwen Ryan said later that they had had the perfect race for Sydney 2000, but so did other [00:13:00] teams. And although she won the bronze, she said she appreciated it more than the silver. And in earning the bronze, she became the first.
And I believe it’s still the only organ donor to win an Olympic medal.
Alison Brown: Huh. that’s amazing. First of all, and so special for her and her brother to see that, but also a little surprising. Yeah. That, that hasn’t, that, that hasn’t come up. But it also reminds you how small the Olympic medalist pool of people are.
But yeah, what, what an amazing story that’s really beautiful that she was able to. Save her brother like that. And as hard as that was, it did not end her career.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So a little bit of, where are they now? brother Michael’s transplant and kidney functioned for about 10 years before it gave out. And then their other sister, Chrissy, was able to donate by then.
So he got another kidney. [00:14:00] Missy herself lives in California with her husband and three sons. All of whom Ro Keith is at Cal, Bach Ryan is at Princeton and Hugh was on the under 19 US National team. I know. So you kind of wonder, oh, in 28 are we gonna see another Ryan?
Alison Brown: Well, what’s funny is that they can never complain to her.
About not wanting to practice. I gave your uncle a kidney and I still got out there.
Jill Jaracz: Well, and you know, and I think in, in stuff I read, she said, well, we never really pressured the kids into rowing. You know, it’s something they wanna do and they, they do good at. That’s, that’s cool. Um, her partner Karen, also got married and had children.
She was a, an assistant coach at UW Madison for a while, and now teaches yoga in Madison, Wisconsin. Uh, the pair were inducted into the US Rowing Hall of Fame in the class of 2010. As for our gold medalists, Gorgen, Damien was in her first Olympics. She went on to become just one of three rowers to have won five Olympic gold medals [00:15:00] in rowing.
she also won gold in the eight at 2000. So she walked away from Sydney with two gold medals in her pocket. then she repeated gold in both events in 2004 and 2008. In 2004, she paired with her best friend, Vika Nu for the rest of her Olympic career. That ended at 20 London 2012, with a fifth place finish.
in the mix there, I think she took a couple of breaks and had kids as well. So she came back and stormed back to more gold medals. And in Romania, her name is right up there in popularity with Nadia Koi. she, she seems to be quite, quiet on the international scene. Very more modest, but she’s very, very accomplished and very well known in her country. Uh, Sydney did her
Alison Brown: talking with the or?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Right. Sydney was Ana’s OTs GNAs only Olympics, where she competed in pairs with the exception of her first games in 1992, where she won silver in quadruple skulls. She [00:16:00] rode in the eights. Basically that was her big one. So this was a kind of an outlier where she’s like, yeah, let’s do the pairs, and they win gold.
But then she may mainly is an eighth rower, and her Olympic career ended in 2008 with a total of four golds, one silver and one bronze.
Alison Brown: Well, to me, the best part of this story is that Missy came back. I mean, that’s. Talk about sheer force of will,
Jill Jaracz: right?
Alison Brown: Oh man. And,
Jill Jaracz: and then you go, man, you got a kidney that big. Do you still have more if your brother, brother still needs it?
Alison Brown: Yeah. Can you donate half of the other one? ’cause you clearly don’t need that much.
Yeah. But donation is, is no joke. It’s not easy.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right, right. I have a, a friend of mine from high school, her son needs a kidney and it’s, it’s a tough road. trying to find a living donor is hard. Trying to hope that an organ will come your way is tough as well.
So for everybody who signs the [00:17:00] organ donor card or offers to, become a donor, that’s, that’s, uh, a really good thing that helps keep people alive.
Alison Brown: And I’ll put this out publicly ’cause I’ve said this to my family. Take everything, if anything ever happens to me,
Jill Jaracz: right? Yeah.
Alison Brown: Take everything. What am I gonna do with it?
Jill Jaracz: Right. if it can help somebody else,
Alison Brown: by all means. Yeah, absolutely.
Jill Jaracz: so that is the coxless pairs competition from rowing.
Are you a Milano? Or are you a Cortina?
Jill Jaracz: And I feel like we can relate to our illustrious American pair. Missy Ryan and Karen Kraft because as they had to bootstrap their way to Sydney, we are bootstrapping our way to Milano.
Alison Brown: We are absolutely bootstrapping our way to Milano, which is where all our amazing listeners and friends come in for our fundraiser. We’re running a fundraiser right now. Are you a Milano or are you a Corina? To get us to Milano and Corina and. We’re gonna be creating 32 [00:18:00] daily episodes during the games, the Olympics and the Paralympics, and that is not a cheap endeavor, and we need your help to do it.
You can go to Flame Alive pod.com/milano Cortina fundraiser.
You can see some pretty fun thank you gifts that we have going on. Your pet can be our mascot, which is probably my favorite one that people can do. You can get a postcard from Alan or Cortina, depending on which one you choose. And shout outs website. Thank yous, mascots for each of us. For the remainder of the games.
So give us a hand and get us there so that we can share the stories that you can’t get anywhere else. Where else would people get lost on a mountain and share that story?
Jill Jaracz: Yes. We’re as, as I believe, listener Patrick May have said, from Paris. It was as close to Paris as you could get to being [00:19:00] there, and I was there.
That is the kind of coverage we give you in Milano. Or that is the kind of coverage that we will give you from Milano Cortina. We will tell you what it’s like, how cold it is, if it’s cold, how snowy it is, how the transportation will be, because that’s gonna be a thing as the games are spread across Northern Italy, we too will be spreading ourselves across northern Italy in some ways, shape or form, hopefully, in order to see as many events as possible and let you know what it’s really like to be there.
I will say if you in show shoutouts, we’re gonna do something new with show shoutouts for Milano Cortina. So you are gonna wanna see and hear what we do with your name. So be sure to, join in the fun of the fundraiser at uh, flame live pod.com/milano cortina fundraiser. And thank you to all of you who have.
Donated so far, you’ve really helped us get a, a good start [00:20:00] to being there and, uh, we really appreciate and are looking forward to celebrating you during the games.
Sydney 2000: Olympics Closing Ceremony
Jill Jaracz: Now you have got, we’re we’re at the end.
Alison Brown: We’re at the end, yes. As we said before, penultimate podcast episode on Sydney. So we’re gonna start talking about the closing ceremony.
Competition is over. It’s October 1st and 114,000 spectators packed Stadium Australia for the Olympic closing ceremony. In a show titled A Fond Farewell From Australia. Rick Birch is the director of Ceremonies and David Atkins, the artistic director and producer, they created this show, and when I tell you.
Please everybody go back and watch it. We’ll put the link in the show notes. You will be right back in 2000 and it is so much fun. This is a great closing ceremony. So the ceremony [00:21:00] starts with an announcement that groundskeeper, at the Northwest track entrance. Please leave the field immediately. The ceremony is about to commence.
So you think it’s just a normal announcement? Oh no, this is part of the show. So. They start chasing the groundskeepers off the field, but the groundskeeper’s truck stalls and he can’t get off. And then the, the, the little truck starts to, to veer wildly through the millennium marching band coming on the field.
Chaos ensues. The performers are chased by the cart and back around. And then of course, very quickly you realize this is part of the show and that nobody’s going to die from this cart, but this is the scene that they decided to set. It gives you an idea of where Sidney wants to go with this. And so the first performance is Christina New performing my island home.
The lyrics were rewritten to be about [00:22:00] Australia, and the centerpiece stage is built around a giant column with spinning pens, and the column rises up onto a giant prote projection geode. And Annu sang atop the geode with the world map projected on the rotating screens.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, very cool.
Alison Brown: It’s beautiful. And next come the boring parts.
So this is the part where you speed through, so it’s the ceremonial portions of the night. The athletes march in and gather on the infield. We get the anthems of Australia and Greece, both the founding place of the Olympics, and the next host sung by. A children’s choir. Oh, and they’re spinning on the stage, so we got children’s choir check.
Next come the speeches. First is Michael Knight, who is the president of Sydney, 2000, and I think the tallest man I have ever seen on an Olympic stage, and that’s saying something. Then of course, IOC President won. [00:23:00] Antonio Samran is accompanied by a favorite of ours. A C President John Coates coats, he does not go rogue.
He stands nicely in his spot and in Sam Ranch’s speech, he tried his hand at the Aussie, Aussie Aussie chant.
Jill Jaracz: No way,
Alison Brown: it’s adorable. The crowd totally went with it, even though it didn’t quite sound right with his accent. Oi, oi, oi. Comes back. They’re thrilled and as you mentioned earlier, he declares the Sydney 2000, the last ex uh, Olympics of his PR presidential tenure, the best Olympics ever.
Then come the introduction of the eight athletes elected as new members of the IOC. I only mention this ’cause we get a few names we’re we have heard and we will hear when we talk about history.
Jill Jaracz: Oh,
Alison Brown: little pole vaulter called Sergey bka.
Jill Jaracz: Wow. Who’s butt I would touch in [00:24:00] 2024
Alison Brown: and two swimmers that we mentioned earlier in our swimming stories.
Suzy O’Neill and Alexander Popoff.
Jill Jaracz: Oh wow.
Alison Brown: So now we get the handover ceremony, which is often the most exciting part of a closing ceremony. ’cause you get to see what the next host is gonna be like. And this is amazing to look back at it now, knowing the kind of host Athens was and the kind of opening ceremony they created.
So this piece of theater, and that’s the only way to describe it. Hints at what their opening ceremony ended to be like. So first we start with an army of Greek priestesses marching into the stadium wearing laurel leaves in their dresses. And I wonder if this is the same group of dancers who do the torch lighting ceremony.
’cause they have that same mystique about them and they dance with a [00:25:00] theatrical orchestra, though the music’s a bit somber. But it’s very Greek. But then they move with the Olympic flag from its pole, and they throw their branches from their dresses on top of the flag so that the laurel leaves and the Olympic flag are together.
But hey, I’m like, that’s a historic flag. Let’s be careful with that. We talked in Paris about what the handover, which handover flag is going on. Yeah. This is the Soul Olympic flag.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay.
Alison Brown: Got a little concerned that they were manhandling it, but it seemed to have survive, and as they carry the flag out of the stadium.
We see video images of Greek culture superimposed onto the screen of television. I’m not sure what you could see in the stadium if they just put it up on the The Jumbotrons.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: But on television, it’s superimposed over them and it’s the Greek landscape [00:26:00] and historic Skypes and sculptures, very nineties in its graphics.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, awesome.
Alison Brown: Then we get Australian soprano, Yvonne Kenny, who sings the Olympic Hymn as eight Australian athletes. Take the flag from the priestesses and carry it out of the stadium. Nikki Webster, who you may remember from the opening ceremony yes, comes back and she sings will be one, the official song of the Sydney Olympics.
And the cauldron is extinguished.
Okay, now the party.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: So Pop Singer, Vanessa AMO starts with a song called Absolutely Everybody. That also seems to be the only lyric of the song because that’s what she sings. We get dancing couples of all ages fill the track along with giant rolling Cuppy dolls. [00:27:00]
Jill Jaracz: Okay, what Fever Dream is this?
Alison Brown: The entire thing is the Sydney Fever Dream.
My and it’s goodness. Fantastic. So now we get shots from a fake cannon. That heralds the arrival of Phil and Tommy Emanuel performing terra firma, balloon headed angels, wrangled, giant angry chicken floats. What I can describe it no more accurately that there are giant angry chickens. And let me just tell you, the giant angry chickens come back for the paralympic closing ceremony too.
Jill Jaracz: Well, A, they got their money’s worth out of them, I suppose, but B, it also sounds like was there a parade somewhere or a celebration somewhere and we could just take or purchase their leftover goods and reuse them for our closing ceremony. At this point,
Alison Brown: they did use a lot of blowups and sort of [00:28:00] float.
Balloons.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: So I have a feeling throughout Australia for the next 10 years, in every parade there was a giant angry chicken. So next up we have in excess. And this is really emotional because original lead singer Michael Hutchins had died by suicide in 1997. So singer John Stevens led the band and for us eighties kids.
Oh, this was a big deal.
Jill Jaracz: That’s what a shame about. In excess.
Alison Brown: Yeah. But he sounded great. Sounded great. Jimmy Barnes comes next. He was the lead singer of a band called Cold Chisel, which is apparently one of the bestselling bands in Australian history.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: And. Throughout all these songs and dancers and floats, character balloons are all filling the track around the athletes.
It was wild. It was wild. It was like Mardi Gras and a mum’s parade had taken over the Macy’s Thanksgiving day.
Jill Jaracz: Oh [00:29:00] my.
Alison Brown: Not done. ’cause here comes a big moment to me. If you remember our discussion from the opening ceremony, Sydney 2000 put a big emphasis on recognizing the importance of aboriginal culture in Australian history, and that continued in the closing ceremony. Midnight oil performed beds are burning. And the song is about how white Australians stole the land from the Arab Aboriginal people.
Big line in there is give it back. You know, that was the, the point of the song. So having that song performed at the closing ceremony was a big moment in Australian, pop culture. And the band wore black sweatshirts with, sorry, printed in big white letters. Across the shirts and Arab Aboriginal singer, UT Indie, sang a song called Treaty accompanied by Aboriginal dancers and performers.
It was really beautiful and also just [00:30:00] fun ’cause Midnight Oil is amazing again, eighties kid talking here. But to hear that song played in front of the worldwide audience saying we as white Australians. Committed a crime against the Aboriginal people. That was no joke. That must have been a heavy moment for a lot of people.
But don’t worry, heaviness does not last in a closing ceremony, fever, dream. ‘ cause Next we get the performers dressed as sort of like cartoon swimmers and like, what would you imagine a cartoon swimmer looking like and a water polo player? They dance into the stadium pulling a giant thong sandal float.
Okay, and our next performer is on top of the sandal, but she can’t see who it is. She’s got a giant sunhat sunglasses and a little flirty sundress. Kylie
Jill Jaracz: Olivia.
Alison Brown: She reaches the stage. [00:31:00] Backup singers pull off the dress, reveal her pink sequence costume that would make a showgirl jealous. It’s Kylie Mau.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, you can’t have a ceremonies in Australia at this time without Kylie.
Alison Brown: She puts on a giant hot pink feather headdress and breaks out into Abba’s dancing Queen.
Jill Jaracz: Wow.
Alison Brown: That’s
Jill Jaracz: epic.
Alison Brown: You think we’ve been off the rails before? Oh no, we’re just getting started because the giant floats continue to come into the stadium one by one, each carrying an Australian star. So first we get golfer, Greg Norman, who rides a shark.
Nice being accompanied. Right? That was his nickname. Uh, accompanied by the theme of Jaws, he’s hitting golf balls off the shark. Next we get children’s show characters, bananas and pajamas, and they roll in with a host of children dressed like [00:32:00] Kaleidoscope MPAs. Next up, supermodel, L McPherson is escorted by people dressed as roles of film.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: Okay. Now Crocodile Dundee himself follows on a float in the shape of his signature hat, along with giant shrimp and frill neck lizards on unicycles.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay
Alison Brown: folks. I am not exaggerating or or imagining any of this. Wow. It looks as wild as you think it does, and somehow it all makes perfect sense. It is just this glorious celebration of Australian pop culture. Here’s the piece to resistance of this float parade. Priscilla, queen of the Desert and an army of drag queens.
Jill Jaracz: Oh my gosh. Wow. [00:33:00] There you go. Time and place.
Alison Brown: Okay, don’t worry. ’cause Kylie Mau is back to top. This all off and yet another sparkly costume. This woman can do costume changes faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. She is joined by men at work who perform. What else? Down, under land. Down under. Yep. And joined by all the other singers.
They all come in and do this rousing, version of down under. Is that the end?
Jill Jaracz: No,
Alison Brown: of course not. Please
Jill Jaracz: tell me there’s
Alison Brown: more. Of course not, because you’ve got to have some version of waltzing Matilda.
Jill Jaracz: Oh,
Alison Brown: you get Australian, country music legends come out, perform Waltzing Matilda. All the performers and probably everyone in the stadium join in for an absolute perfect finale.
Everybody is in tears. Everybody is in, is crying. Cue the fireworks. Wow. And they shoot up not only over the [00:34:00] stadium, over the opera house and over the bridge.
Jill Jaracz: Oh my goodness. What a show.
Man. Oh man. Well, I know what I’m doing with the rest of my day.
That is incredible. And put a pin in that for Paralympics. ’cause if some of those floats come back,
Alison Brown: put a pin in it because it’s not just giant shrimp.
Jill Jaracz: Oh
Alison Brown: on, on Unicycles.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, well we will find out about that next month for sure. Oh, excellent.
Sources used for this episode
Alison Brown: Oh, sources.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. Shout out on sources for me. Uh, we have the Associated Press, The Cal Bears, California Polytechnic State University Alumni News, sports Illustrated Chicago Tribune, uh, inner Fire Yoga, the International Olympic Committee, the National Rowing Foundation, the Herald Times Ole Madman, Princeton University Rowing Australia. Steve Red [00:35:00] grave.com, US rowing. And the Indianapolis Star and World Rowing
Alison Brown: Minor, very short Olympic, the Associated Press and of course associated YouTube videos.
Jill Jaracz: Excellent. Whew. We’re getting close to the end. That’s a way to go out.
Alison Brown: I am gonna go put on my giant shrimp costume and go practice on my unicycle now.
Jill Jaracz: Well, I will work on being an angry chicken because I think that is more fitting to
Ensure the best podcasting from Milano Cortina 2026
Jill Jaracz: Alright, and we will also get back to fundraising as well. Again, if you could help support us getting to Milano Cortina so that you can have the Best Olympics podcast possible, uh, please go to flame live pod.com. Has it up right on the front page. So just. Don’t even have to remember the, the back half of [00:36:00] that, but Flame live pod.com support our show’s efforts.
If you can’t support us financially, please share the show with your friends so we can get more listeners, and that helps the show as well. So coming up on the end of history.
Alison Brown: But you know what? We got another year of history coming right behind it.
Jill Jaracz: That’s true. That’s true. Okay. And we’ll be back next week with a regular show with more, interviews from athletes leading up to the Winter Olympics in 2026.
Thank you so much for listening,
Alison Brown: and until next time, keep the flame alive.