Gold

Men's national team (handball)

The national handball teams of Russia and Sweden were destined to meet in the final of the Sydney Olympics exactly 20 years ago.

In the two main tournaments before the Games - the World and European Championships - these teams also competed for gold among themselves.

Wards of Vladimir Maksimov lost both times, but got the perfect opportunity to take revenge.

By the break, the Swedes were able to lead with a difference of one goal and then increase the gap to two goals.

But when the score was 14:16, goalkeeper Andrei Lavrov began to work wonders.

Within a few minutes, he reflected absolutely all the shots of the Scandinavians, while the Russians scored seven goals.

This spurt decided the outcome of the fight.

The Russian national team won gold medals, and Lavrov became the first and so far the only three-time Olympic champion in handball.

Moreover, he won all his victories under different flags (the USSR, the United Team and Russia).

Elena Yelesina (athletics, high jump)

The path of the high jumper Elena Yelesina to Olympic gold turned out to be very long.

She was one of the best in the early 1990s, but then left the sector for a long time due to the birth of her son.

Shortly before the Sydney Olympics, she returned to the sport and won the silver at the World Championship.

On September 30, 2000, Yelesina's finest hour came.

In the final of the competition, only the Russian woman and Hestri Cloet from South Africa conquered the height of 2.01 meters (the Swede Kaisa Bergkvist stopped at 1.99), and then both athletes could not reach the bar at the 2.03 meter mark.

The Russian woman became the champion, since she took all the previous heights on the first try, and Cloet made one mistake.

Yelesina became the first domestic athlete to win Olympic gold in the high jump.

Oleg Saitov (boxing, up to 67 kg)

Boxer Oleg Saitov went to Sydney in the status of the current Olympic welterweight champion, but at the same time he was not the favorite of the competition.

That year, there was a decline in his results - Saitov not only with difficulty qualified for the Games, but also lost at the European Championship in his very first match.

A native of the Samara region managed to more than compensate for all past failures.

He not only won every fight, including the final one with Ukrainian Sergey Dotsenko, but also won the Val Barker Cup as the most technical boxer of the Olympics in all weight categories.

Vyacheslav Ekimov (cycling, individual road race)

The men's time trial road race had two clear favorites - Olympic group champion Jan Ulrich of Germany and the triumphant return to the sport after battling cancer, Lance Armstrong of the United States.

Both of them eventually climbed the podium, but behind the American's professional teammate, Olympic champion while still in the USSR national team Vyacheslav Yekimov.

The 34-year-old cyclist at that time started in the middle group, long before the main characters of the race.

Yekimov set a benchmark that never submitted to anyone.

Each next rider was behind the Russian, and when Ulrich lost less than eight seconds at the finish line, Ekimov's victory became official.

It is interesting that the four closest pursuers of the Russians later became heroes of doping scandals, and Armstrong lost the bronze won in Sydney.

Dmitry Svatkovsky (modern pentathlon)

Pentathlete Dmitry Svatkovsky was the main favorite of the Atlanta Olympics, but then he missed his chance to become champion.

Over the four years, many new names have appeared in his sport, and in Sydney, much less expectations were associated with the Russian.

They almost completely disappeared when the medal competitions began.

Svatkovskiy shared 13th place in shooting and could not come close to the leaders due to fencing and swimming.

Show jumping, the most unpredictable type of program, literally saved the Russian athlete.

He scored the maximum number of points and before running for three kilometers climbed to fifth place.

Svatkovsky had to play 19 seconds against the leaders of the competition, and as a master of this particular type of program, he did it.

On that day, the Russian pentathlete managed to win the Olympics for the first time in 20 years.

Women's team (rhythmic gymnastics, group all-around)

2000 was a turning point for Russian rhythmic gymnastics.

It was in Sydney that the national team's unbeaten streak began at the Olympic Games, which continues to this day.

It was started by Irina Belova, Elena Shalamova, Natalya Lavrova, Maria Netesova, Vera Shimanskaya and Irina Zilber, who became champions in the group all-around.

Now any victory of Russian artists seems to be something in itself for granted, and 20 years ago the girls had to try hard to take first place.

In qualifying they lost to the Greek national team, and in the final they scored the same number of points as the Belarusians.

Only by additional indicators, after taking into account the assessments of all the judges, the Russians were able to win gold with a margin of only 0.020 points

  • Dmitry Sautin

  • Reuters

Murad Umakhanov (freestyle wrestling, up to 63 kg)

Freestyle wrestler Murad Umakhanov went to the Games in Sydney only for gold to honor the memory of his younger brother, promising athlete Shamil Umakhanov.

Two years earlier, he tragically died along with another two dozen people after the collapse of a balcony at the opening of the Russian championship in Nalchik.

In preliminary bouts in the weight category up to 63 kg, Umakhanov did not experience any problems, but then almost flew out in the semifinals.

The South Korean Jang Jae Sung was defeated only in the last action.

The well-known Bulgarian Serafim Barzakov was waiting for the wrestler from Khasavyurt in the final.

He won the first half of the fight, but Umakhanov was able to level the score, and 20 seconds before the end, he grabbed the opponent's leg and got the victory point.

Sagid Murtazaliev (freestyle wrestling, up to 97 kg)

The Olympic Games in Sydney could well have passed without the wrestler Sagid Murtazaliev.

He lost at the qualifying tournament in memory of Ivan Yarygin, but the coaching staff nevertheless included the reigning world and European champion in weight up to 97 kg in the team.

And the athlete from Dagestan did not disappoint.

The most important fight for Murtazaliev was the semi-final against the Georgian Eldar Kurtanidze.

The Russian lost to him six times in his career, but this time he managed to gain the upper hand.

After that, Murtazaliev dealt with the Kazakhstani Islam Bayramukov without any problems in the final.

13 years later, the Sydney Olympics champion sent his gold medal to the International Olympic Committee, protesting the decision to exclude wrestling from the competition program.

Fortunately, she retained her Olympic status, and the award returned back to Murtazaliev.

Silver


Women's national team (volleyball)

The Russian women's volleyball team could be one of the main discoveries of the Sydney Olympics.

Nikolai Karpol's young team, in which half of the players were under 25, went through the entire tournament without defeat until the final.

At the group stage, the girls, among whom was the young Ekaterina Gamova, even managed to defeat the Cubans, who had won two Olympics and two world championships in the previous eight years.

In the match for gold, which took place on September 30, the Cuban national team was again waiting for the Russians.

The first two sets were held in an incredibly stubborn struggle, and Karpol's players won both games with a score of 27:25 and 34:32.

But from the achieved success, the Russians were literally dizzy.

Much more experienced Cubans managed to turn the game around and win the next three sets quite easily.

Natalia Ivanova (taekwondo, over 67 kg)

Taekwondo debuted as an Olympic discipline in Sydney.

The new sport immediately brought Russia one medal.

It was won by Natalya Ivanova, who had previously won the country's first award at the world championships.

To win the Olympics, a native of the Irkutsk region had to win three fights.

But in each of them she was opposed by rivals who had won medals at the world championships in the previous three years.

Ivanova coped with two of them, but in the final she lost to the Chinese woman Chen Zhong, who was so much superior to the Russian woman in height that she left her no chance.

  • Natalia Ivanova at the award ceremony

  • Reuters

Raimkul Malakhbekov (boxing, up to 54 kg)

In addition to Oleg Saitov, three more Russian boxers fought for the gold of the Sydney Olympics on September 30.

But all of them were not as lucky as the two-time Olympic champion.

In each of the other three finals, domestic athletes lost to the Cubans.

Raimkul Malakhbekov was the first to receive a silver medal in weight up to 54 kg.

With two world titles under his belt, he was the favorite of the Sydney Olympics and easily reached the final, finishing one of the fights ahead of schedule.

But his latest rival was Guillermo Rigondo, the future bantamweight superstar, who is now, at 40 years old, the WBA champion.

As it turned out later, during the fight Malakhbekov mistakenly believed that he was losing, and therefore chose the wrong tactics for himself, which ultimately led to a real defeat.

Gaidarbek Gaidarbekov (boxing, up to 75 kg)

In weight up to 75 kg, Gaidarbek Gaidarbekov reached the final, and one of his fights also ended ahead of schedule by the referee's decision.

He was opposed by Jorge Gutierrez, who was supposed to act as the reigning world champion, but he never won his title because of the protest of the Cuban national team against dishonest refereeing.

Gutierrez was able to outwit Gaidarbekov by choosing a closed stance, which the Russian did not expect.

Not a single boxer managed to seize a significant advantage, and the fight could well have ended in a draw.

However, 40 seconds before the end, the Cuban struck two unanswered blows, which were enough to win.

Gaidarbekov had to wait four years after that to still become an Olympic champion.

In the final of the Athens Games, he defeated the future star - Kazakhstani Gennady Golovkin.

Sultan Ibragimov (boxing, up to 91 kg)

Unlike Malakhbekov and Gaidarbekov, Sultan Ibragimov was not the favorite of the final in the weight category up to 91 kg.

He was opposed by Felix Savon, who came to Sydney for his third gold.

The Russian understood this and preferred to let the opponent box in the fight for the title, and he himself was waiting for his mistakes so that he could counterattack.

This plan didn't work.

Savon quickly took the lead with a score of 10: 1, after which there was no time to recoup.

Ibragimov managed at some point to reduce the gap to four points, but then released the Cuban again.

14 seconds before the end, the Russian broke Savona's eyebrow to blood, but this did not stop the fight.

Ibragimov had to admit defeat.

Bronze

Dmitry Sautin (diving, individual tower)

The 2000 Games were the first to award medals in synchronized diving.

Since then, athletes have had the opportunity to win four awards at once.

But for 20 years only Dmitry Sautin managed to take advantage of this chance.

By the end of the Sydney Olympics, he had already won gold, silver and bronze medals, after which he only had to perform in personal jumps from a 10-meter platform.

Sautin had to perform through pain - he was worried about both a hand injury and an inflammation on his lower leg.

It was unbearable to hold on to the leg while spinning, but it became even more difficult to enter the water correctly.

Sautin succeeded twice, but then there was a splash, for which the judges lowered the marks, and two Chinese jumpers took the lead.

The 26-year-old at that time, the athlete miraculously managed to climb to third place and win a historic medal for diving.

Women's national team (athletics, relay race 4 x 400 meters)

A year before the Olympics, Russian women managed to win the world championship in the 4 x 400 meters relay for the first time since Soviet times.

Of the participants in that victorious final, Svetlana Goncharenko and Olga Kotlyarova fought for the Sydney gold.

Their team was strengthened by experienced Yulia Sotnikova and Irina Privalova, who had become a hurdler champion three days earlier.

The fight for first place was in vain when Marion Jones joined the US team.

At that Olympics, she already won two golds and two bronzes (as it turned out later, thanks to the use of doping), and in the final of the relay after her third stage, the American women became unattainable.

The Russians had to fight for silver with Jamaica, and Privalova lost only 0.21 seconds to Lorraine Graham.

Years later, Jones admitted to cheating and returned her medals, but according to the rules of those years, the disqualification of the entire team for the misconduct of one athlete was not provided for in the relay.

After a series of lawsuits, the American women retained the gold, while the Russian girls retained bronze medals.

  • Women's national team (athletics, relay race 4 x 400 meters)

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © Neal Simpson / EMPICS