Boeing 747-400 with Sydney Olympic bid stickers at
Manchester Airport, circa 1993 The Australian Olympic Committee originally contemplated either Melbourne or Brisbane as their preferred bidding host cities, but Sydney gained popular favor amongst AOC President John Coates, and others, having never been a host city, as they were the last Australian bidding cities.
Brasília, the capital city of Brazil, and
Milan, Italy, withdrew during the bidding process – Milan shortly after submitting its bid book, Brasília following the visit by the IOC Inspection Group, which stated the city had substandard facilities.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, also put in a bid for the Games, in order to gain some recognition of that country's existence and new independence, but withdrew very early into the race. Berlin was an early front-runner, hoping to cap the decade of German reconstruction and
reunification by hosting the first Games of the new millennium. But the support of its bid was marred when anti-Olympic protesters marched through the city just four days before the final vote in Monaco claiming that the games would deny funds to further domestic reconstruction efforts.
Manchester's bid book was thought strong, but with much regeneration in the city needed. A promotional video shown to the IOC depicting London landmarks such as
Buckingham Palace and
Tower Bridge was criticized heavily by the British media who said that Manchester's bid was 'suffering from an identity crisis'. The work that went into Manchester's unsuccessful Olympic bid was reused on a smaller scale for the
2002 Commonwealth Games bid in which Manchester won. The impending announcement of the host city came down to a head-to-head between Sydney and Beijing with Manchester, Berlin and Istanbul ranked outsiders. With China's suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 still fresh in the minds of many in the West,
Human Rights Watch launched a major media campaign to influence members of the International Olympic Committee to vote against awarding the Games to Beijing on human rights grounds. The campaign was one of the earliest efforts to claim that Olympic hosts should meet human rights tests. IOC president
Juan Antonio Samaranch thanked by name alphabetically the five competing cities before announcing the winning bid. Many Chinese in Beijing mistook his utterance of the city's name as an announcement that it had been awarded the Games, and widespread celebrations began. These were cut short just minutes later when images from Sydney came through, showing that the Australian city had won. The
International Paralympic Committee then awarded the
2000 Summer Paralympics to Sydney. == Proposed dates ==