This week the Australian Olympic Committee released the final figures for Sydney 2000. They show that athletics was watched by 1,526,049 spectators with 99.92 per cent of all the available tickets sold and a 100 per cent sell-out for three of the days. Even in the morning sessions the spectator total never dipped under 99.70 per cent or 101,503 paying spectators. The demand for athletics even beat gates for the traditionally well attended opening and closing ceremonies and also beat Australia's beloved swimming. The pool events attracted 196,461 spectators, or, 98.83 per cent of the available capacity.

For those who say football is the biggest sport in the Games, think again. Football sold 673,236 tickets of the 1,043,306 available for matches played outside Sydney while in Sydney itself, where the final was played, sales of 85.57 per cent were obtained.

The figures underline the fact that without athletics, there could be no serious Olympic Games.