As the nation stops to find out who wins the 1500-metre swimming finals, or who takes the gold for the marathons, some Australians will be glued to the Internet checking for event results.
A live feed of results relating to Australian athletes will be available from www.olympics.com.au. The site, to be operated by the Seven Network's i7 web team, will draw on information from the network's television coverage of the Games and will be a joint effort with the Australian Olympic Committee.
It is just one of several official and unofficial sites that have been set up to provide information about the Sydney 2000.
However, the AOC's move to grant Seven the rights to run such a site came as a surprise to many, as IBM has had the exclusive rights to operate the official Olympic site since Atlanta in 1996.
IBM is still operating www.olympics.com which will grow to as many as 70,000 pages at the peak of the games and is geared to cope with an expected 6 billion hits. IBM also operates the official athletes fanmail site www.fanmail.olympic.ibm.com.
SOCOG (Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games) and the Sydney City Council recently launched a site to help people get to the Games called www.gamesinfo.com.au. It includes a complete version of the recently released Official Spectator Guide as well as other Olympic information such as a general guide to Sydney for visitors, recommended travel details for Sydney spectators and residents, Olympics Live entertainment and activities, the Olympic Arts Festival, the Torch welcome in the city, the Marathon and Triathalon and an A-to-Z guide on life in Australia.
While SOCOG, IBM and Seven have the rights to the national and international sites, other web builders have not worried about getting an official seal of approval from the IOC. Several unofficial sites have thrived without apparent interference.
Most provide information for visitors who are in Sydney during the Games, while others such as Sydney2000.Com and Sydney2000fans.Com are taking on the official sites head-to-head.
However, they are likely to have trouble keeping up with the official sites once the games begin. Others worth a look include Sydney2000online, which is a travel site rather than an Olympics site but has hung its hat on the games and the tourism traffic it has generated; Sydney Olympics 2000 City, an amateur site run by David Kidd and Sydney in 2000 which has received flack from other Sydneysiders for sometimes being too negative.
Of course anyone who joined the Olympic Club when the Sydney Games campaign was first launched still has access to the club site at www.theolympicclub.com.au and anybody wanting to cash in on the games for business purposes should visit The Business Club Australia site.
Business Club Australia was established as a global networking club to connect Australian exporters with international business people. It is the first time such a club has been established by an Olympic host nation and it has both a physical presence in the form of business centres in each Australian state and at various locations overseas and an online presence through its Web site.
It is a good way to link to the official sponsors and several other business organisations that are geared up to help Aussie companies get the best out of the Games opportunity.
