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Swedish gold bath in Sydney

After many years with only a few medals the Swedish athletes had to prove that Sweden is better than Norway. It didn´t take many days until the first medals were starting to drop in. This was our best Olympic games since 1972 in Munich!

Benga´s Boys never get their well-deserved gold medal Poor, poor Benga´s Boys, you never get your gold medal. The Swedish national team with the coach Bengt "Benga" Johansson , with 12 years as coach for the national team. They played very well during the whole tournament and got all the way to the final as planned. They won all the matches in the group round after wins over Australia, Slovenia, Tunisia , France and Spain and got their favourite opponents Egypt in the quarter final. They won by 27-23 after very good goalkeeping by Tomas Svensson, who was the hero of the game. In the semi-final Spain waited. Sweden played their best game in the whole tournament and were leading with five goals in half-time. Sweden won the game without problems by 32-25.

Wislander was the best player of the game and scored 9 goals. The goalie Peter Gentzel also played very well and saved two penalties. The opponents in the final was Russia, a classic final between the two leading nations in handball. The Swedes played well in the first half of the game and was leading with two goals. But Sweden started making mistakes and Russia scored 7 goals when Sweden didn’t make any goals at all. Sweden didn’t give up and get 23-24 with 9 minutes left, but Russia won the game by 26-28. Russian heroes were the goalkeeper Andrei Lavrov and the star Alexander Tutschkin. It was the last Olympic Games for the Swedish Old Boys, Staffan Olsson, 36 years, (who was injured in the game against Spain), Magnus Wislander 36, (the best player in history), Thomas Sivertsson 35, Magnus Andersson 34, Pierre Thorsson 34 and Ola Lindgren 36 (most caps in history in the Swedish National Team). Sorry for them that they didn’t get their well-deserved Gold Medal.

Shocked a whole nation Lars Frölander shocked the whole Australian nation when he defeated the two Australian swimmers, Michael Klim and Geoff Huegill in 100 m butterfly. He set the new European record to 52.00 seconds and gave Sweden their third gold medal in Sydney 2000. Earlier he had failed in the 100 m crawl where he only came 6th in the final lap. The same morning that he took the gold medal, he woke up with a really bad cold. His throat hurt and he had a headache.
Therese Alshammar finished at a second place in the 100 m crawl final, Inge De Bruin from Holland took the gold medal. When a TV- reporter asked her if she felt that this was a historic moment, she answered "Yes this is the last time I end up at second place". But after the 50 m crawl final she finished second again after the Dutch swimmer Inge De Bruin.
Therese´s coach said that she was the most disappointed silvermedalist that he had ever seen. Sweden also got a bronze medal in swimming this time in the ladies 4 x 100m crawl. The swimmers of the team was Louise Jöhncke, Therese Ahlshammar, Johanna Sjöberg and Anna-Karin Kammerling.

Unstoppable Swede Gold! 1952 was the last time Sweden got a gold medal in wrestling, but 2000 it was time again to get another gold medal. This time it was Mikael Ljungberg who got the medal in Greek-roman style 97 kg. He defeated Davyd Saldadze from Ukraine.
It was a boring match and the final score was 2-1 to Ljungberg.
This was not the first gold medal in a big tournament, he had already a gold medal from the European championship and the world championship.
In the semifinal Ljungberg did not have any problems with Garrett Lowney from the United states, who later on got the bronze medal. Ljungberg beat the American on technical superiority.

So close, Waldner!! Jan-Ove Waldner, The Swedish table tennis player who have got many medals from World Championships, European Championships and Olympic Games, got all the way to the final. He had won over the Chinese star Liu Guoliang by 21-19, 21-16 and 21-19 in the semifinal. In the final he met another Chinese star, Kong Linghui. But he was too good for the Swede, Linghui won the very dramatic final by 21-16, 21-19, 17-21, 14-21 and in the last set 21-13. Waldner is 35 years old now and he played already in Seoul 1988. He has played in the Table Tennis Elite for 19 years now and this was probably his last Olympic Games.

Unexpected gold medals Pia Hansen got our first Swedish gold medal in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. She is the fastest marksman in the world and dominated the final. She set two new olympic records and she was only one hit from the world record. Hansen didn`t qualify to the Olympic games but she got a wild card, and she proved that she really deserved it.

The unknown Swedish marksman Jonas Edman, 33, got the gold medal in 50 metres lying shooting. It was Sweden’s second gold medal in the 2000 Olympic Games. No one believed that the Swede would get a medal at all in this Olympic Games as he just got a wild card from International Shooting Association 3 weeks before the games started. It was meant for Edman to get Gold in the Athen Games 2004, so it was a big surprise that he got the gold medal already now.

© 2000 Freeway
Writers:Anders Holmberg (sp02-10@park.se), Marcus Johansson (sp02-13@park.se), Mikael Näslund (sp02-22@park.se) and Andreas Sundberg(sp02-27@park.se).
HTML by: Klas Elvin (nv03-04@park.se).