The last Games for the century took part on the Fifth continent (September 15 - October 2) and became an honorable laurel for the Olympic movement and for establishing the sport as a phenomena for the XX century. Between the many heroes a few women shined -American Marion Jones in Athletics, Dutch Leontien van Morsel in Cycling and Inge de Bruijn in Swimming.
Bulgarian athletes saw off the century with honours. In Sydney they took 5 golds: in Shooting Maria Grozdeva and Tanyo Kiryakov (a second Olympic title after 12 years), Tereza Marinova in Triple Jump, Galabin Boevski in Weightlifting and Armen Nazaryan in Wrestling. Silver medals went to wrestler Serafim Barzakov, weightlifters Alan Tzagaev and Georgi Markov, Rumyana Neykova (Rowing), Petar Merkov (Canoe/Kayak). Two bronze medals took Yordan Yovchev in Gymnastics.
Half a month later at the Para-lympic athlete Ivanka Koleva also won gold for Bulgaria.