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Xinhua Top 10 Sports Stories for 2000
Following are the Top 10 Sports Stories for the year of 2000 selected by Xinhua:
1. The Sydney Olympic Games, hailed as "the best ever Olympic Games" by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, drew a total of 11,000 athletes from 200 countries and regions. The Games featured more than 300 events of 28 sports. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea and South Korea paraded at the opening ceremony under the flag of the Korean Peninsular.
2. China won 29 gold medals in Sydney to finish third after the United States and Russia at the Games, toppling Germany out of the
top three for the first time since the 1972 Munich Games. Host Australia took the fourth place with 16 golds.
3. The International Olympic Committee selected Beijing, Paris, Toronto, Osaka and Istanbul as the bidding candidates for the 2008 Olympic Games.
4. Germany were awarded the right to host the 2006 World Cup Soccer Finals, edging out South Africa by one vote from the 24-member FIFA executive committee.
5. France, the 1998 World Cup winners, became the first country to win the World Cup and the European Championships after they beat Italy 1-0 in the final of the European Championships in the Netherlands.
6. The IOC launched an Erythropoietin (EPO) test in Sydney Games. 11 athletes tested positive for drugs during the Games, the most since 12 positives at the 1984 Los Angles Olympics.
Romanian women's gymnastic all-round gold champions Andrea Raducan and other five athletes were stripped of medals.
7. Diego Maradona and Pele were recognized as the greatest soccer players of the 20th century. Maradona was polled by fans on FIFA's official website while Pele was selected by FIFA officials, national team coaches and journalists.
8. Cricket was hammered by the biggest match-fixing scandal in history and, by the end of the year, three captains were banned for life - Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Salim Malik (Pakistan) and Mohammad Azharuddin (India).
9. Chinese Sun Wen was awarded the women's soccer player of the century by FIFA in an Internet vote on the FIFA's official website.
Sun joined the newly-founded Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) along with four of her national teammates in November.
10. German driver Michael Schumacher won Ferrari their first World Formula One Driver Championship since 1979.
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