Sports 2000: Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

To have a winner, you also have to have a loser. Sports editor DAVID LEGGAT surveys the sporting highs and lows, and the triumphs and scandals of 2000.

Who was the dominant figure in world sport?


Look no further than Elrick Tiger Woods. No one dominated a sport to anything like the same extent in 2000.

The 24-year-old collected three of golf's major trophies - the British and US Opens and the USPGA championship - and became the youngest player to achieve that. He won six successive PGA Tour events - no one's done better in 55 years - and his nine victories in the year were two short of the mark set half a century ago.

He even found time to pitch for a greater financial slice of the action from the tour administrators. Not that he needs it - he already has a fortune that could buy a fair chunk of New Zealand.

He was, simply, a sporting colossus in 2000. With New Zealand caddie Steve Williams at his side, he became the most recognisable sporting face on the planet since Muhammad Ali.

Who are New Zealand's outstanding individual sporting figures?


In Olympic years, that tends to be where the focus is. New Zealand collected only one gold medal and for that, single sculler Rob Waddell is top of the heap.

He backed up his two world championship victories on the grandest stage, and did it with style.

Waddell oozes class. No late-night hoonish behaviour, no mouthing expletives for the all-seeing small screen, no rampant ego. If you like your sports heroes to be modest, personable and damn good, he's your man.

Michael Campbell moved into the top echelon of world golf this year, finishing the year ranked 14th. He tangled with the Tiger at the Andersen Consulting World Matchplay championship in February and got mauled; then tried again in the final round of the Johnnie Walker Classic in November, and came up short. But Campbell has the game to make a significant move this year.

Board sailors Barbara Kendall and Aaron McIntosh won bronze medals at the Olympics. They had aimed higher, parking themselves in Sydney in the months before the Games, but for consistency of performance over several years - in Kendall's case medals at the last three Olympics - they deserve a decent-sized gong.

Other honourable mentions to:

* Leilani Joyce, winner of the British Open squash crown.

* Jeremy Yates, who went to Europe an unheralded 17-year-old and won the world junior road cycling title to earn himself a professional contract.

* Scott Dixon, our best prospect in 20 years to crack the rarefied air of Formula One. He won the US Indy Lights championship and moved a step closer to petrol-head nirvana with his Champ Cars contract.

* Chris Cairns, the central figure in New Zealand's best international cricket result, winning the ICC Knockout Trophy in Nairobi. He completed his metamorphosis from talented but erratic performer to senior pro, and is sitting comfortably among the best allrounders in the game.

* Marlene Castle, winner of the women's world bowls indoor title.

Who were the top teams in New Zealand sport?


All together now, 1-2-3: Team New Zealand, softball's Black Sox and the women's cricket team. The sailors put aside well-documented internal bickering to produce a highly skilled, professional performance, walloping challengers Prada 5-0, and becoming the first non-American syndicate to successfully defend the America's Cup.

Say what you like about the subsequent messy, unseemly breakup. Think what you will about those who then shot through, taking the sheen off a display which clearly had every check and balance covered on the water. Then just admire them for the job they did.

The Black Sox went to East London, South Africa, to defend their world series title and had to do it on the cheap - four to a room, paying for their own meals, forking out a lump sum just to get on the plane.

They triumphed, beating Japan in the final, then, to their embarrassment, found themselves the subject of a public fund-raising appeal. As one player put it: "We are putting our hand up, not out."

Softballers tend to be uncomplaining straightshooters. They are winners and deserve better in terms of finance and public recognition - ie, television air time.

The women's cricket team gave a real buzz to the end of the sporting year. They reached the final of the World Cup at Lincoln, near Christchurch, and went in - as tends to be the way with New Zealand sports teams against Australia - underdogs against the defending champions.

They made only 184 - barely enough - but never gave up and got the right result in a thrilling conclusion in the final over.

Other worthy contenders:

* The Black Caps, who collected their best international success with the ICC knockout trophy in Nairobi.

* The bowls teams for their world titles in men's triple, women's four and triple in South Africa.

* The Crusaders, who took their third successive Super 12 title.

What were the year's biggest sporting scandals?


* Cricket and bookmakers, a bad mix. Hansie Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddin. With luck, the worms have been dug out and squashed, but don't bet on it.

* C. J. Hunter, the unsmiling, drug-fuelled giant former world champion shot putter, who doubles as Marion Jones' husband, breaking down after being exposed as having tested positive for huge amounts of nandrolone.

* Revelations that American Olympic officials, quick to point the finger elsewhere, have been covering up positive tests by some of the top names in world athletics.

* Mark Todd, who, when facing the, er, white-hot scrutiny of Paul Holmes over cocaine and sex allegations in a British newspaper, produced the memorable line: "That's a curly one, Paul."

* Charlie Dempsey, our man on the Fifa executive, whose abstention from voting on who should host the 2006 Soccer World Cup handed the job to Germany ahead of the sentimental favourites South Africa. South Africa had been Dempsey's Oceania Confederation's preference.

Dempsey later said he had not known so many people cared about the decision.

Which famous sporting figures died in 2000?


The word "great' is thrown around like confetti these days, but Emil Zatopek was worthy of it. The only long-distance athlete to win three golds at a single Olympics - 5000m, 10,000m and the marathon in Helsinki, in 1951, and all in the space of eight days - Zatopek held 18 world records in a glorious career. He was 78.

Colin Cowdrey, later Lord Cowdrey, was one of England's finest batsmen, accumulator of 7624 test runs, the first player to take 100 test catches, and all done with a charm and grace of a forgotten age. He was 67.

Who were the year's disappointments?


* Start at the Olympics. Triathlete Hamish Carter, discus thrower Beatrice Faumuina, the equestrian team (Todd's bronze apart), yachting (Kendall and McIntosh excepted), even the women's hockey team (the odd glorious moment excepted).

* David Tua.

* The All Blacks who, believe it or not, had a worse year, as far as results go, than in 1999. Remember the invincible aura on which the legend was built? It's gone.

* The Warriors rugby league team - again.

The most hyped events of the New Zealand sporting year?


Two events fought out the grand final. Team New Zealand were up to the challenge in the America's Cup, but heavyweight hope Tua wasn't.

For months, we were told ad nauseum how Tua was going to topple the champion Lennox Lewis. It all went dreadfully wrong, although from the outset his was always no more than a puncher's chance. Tua, a polite, God-fearing man with a bad line in haircuts, was embarrassed. He might get another chance, but don't hold your breath.

Third placegetter: The rugby league World Cup final when, apparently, we were going to jump on the Kangaroos and bury that 0-52 scoreline from earlier in the year. They gave it everything, but class won out.

The year's most predictable retirement?


Danyon Loader. It seemed that the double Olympic swimming champion spent months wrestling with his dilemma. Should he try for one last Olympic campaign - and then, in which stroke, freestyle or butterfly - or bite the bullet?

By mid-year, it was glaringly obvious he was off the pace, and hadn't done the leadup work.

In June, he stepped out of a limelight he never sought nor savoured.

What were the most memorable images?


Russell Coutts and Dean Barker holding the America's Cup aloft; Waddell collapsed over his oars in Sydney; the Games' opening and closing ceremonies, Cathy Freeman's 400m Olympic victory, amid the colossal weight of her country's expectations.

Herald Online features:

2000 - Year in review

2000 - Month by month

2000 - The obituaries