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Picks of the Week: 18th September 2000

Ah, the Olympic Games are here again, and it only feels like four years since the last one. The opening ceremony was just last weekend, and by now things should be just about hotting up, with freestyle synchronised swimming and the beach volleyball contest getting underway. So sit back and let the folks at Picks Central guide you on a quest to find the sites out there to help you through this sporting marathon.
First up, there's the official Sydney 2000 site. Full of frames, advertising, and just a little too crowded to make it an easy read, it's still jam-packed with information on possibly every aspect of the Summer Games you could need. Not just the sports and the athletes are covered, there's plenty on the city of Sydney, stuff for kids, an Olympic store to spend your money at, plus details of the often overlooked Paralympics which begin today, Monday 18th September.
Once again, the Beeb are down under with their BBC Olympics 2000 coverage. Though it may look like just another news page, it's the depth and attention to detail that make the BBC pages easy to use. It's up-to-date with all the news as you'd expect, plus there's columns and comments, a quiz, the history of the games, plus all the results and schedule details. So as well as watching it on BBC TV day and night, you can keep up with events at all hours on the web.
The Times Sydney 2000 is a mini-site from the newspaper in a nice shade of green. It looks like it's going to be a useful companion to the games, and has Bill Bryson on board to share his thoughts on the event. There's details of life in the Olympic Village, the inevitable guide to Sydney, an Olympic quiz, and the very smart History and Heroes section which outlines who's been hot and where since 1896, including a fair number of Brits.
It wouldn't be a Picks of the Week without at least one site being a Flash spectacular, and this week that honour goes to the Nike.com 2000 site. It's certainly a well designed and good looking site, but not just a case of style over substance. Delve deeper, and there's plenty here for the Olympics enthusiast, with features on a number of world athletes, who just happen to wear Nike goods. During the games, some of the athletes will be on call to answer questions on Radio Free Sydney.
But not everyone is a fan of the games. Voices of dissent are apparent. Shame 2000 parodies the official site with its look and feel, but calls itself "the official site of Australia's unolympic performance in events that matter". Yikes. It doesn't much like Australia's history, criticising its treatment of the Aboriginal people, relations with Indonesia, immigration policy and more. Meanwhile, the Anti-Olympics Alliance is opposed to the Olympic Games and active in organising protests and events to highlight the negative impact of them. Oops. Who said it was only a game?
Finally something for the gentlemen. From Maxim magazine comes the The Gold Standard: Girls of the Olympics. Essentially, it's a bevy of lovely ladies, all of whom are competing in Sydney, whether they be high jumpers, pole-vaulters, or swimmers. So what you get is a wee bit of info about each girl, some nice piccies, and, erm, that's it actually. It's certainly a different take on the games.

Sites Featured in OlymPicks of the Week:

Sydney 2000 - goldfinger.
BBC Olympics 2000 - the man with the golden gun.
The Times Sydney 2000 - goldeneye.
Nike.com 2000 - okay, we've run out of gold Bond songs now.
Unolympic - Shame 2000 - did they make much sense anyway?
Anti-Olympics Alliance - we were going for a 'gold' theme - as in gold medals.
Girls of the Olympics - oh well.

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Previous Weeks' Picks:

[ 11th September 00 | 4th September 00 | 28th August 00 | 21st August 00 ]