Jack Lockett, Australia’s oldest person at 109, was one of the 11,000 Australians who carried the Olympic torch through the country. Lockett threw away his cane as he carried the flame.
The youngest athlete at the Olympics this year is 13-year-old swimmer Faithimath Fariha from the Maldives. The oldest is rifle shooter Bruce Meredith, 63, from the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Nearly 1 in 10 Sydney residents plans to get out of town during the Olympic Games.
There are 10,800 athletes competing this year.
Officials in Australia predict that about 111,000 foreign visitors, including Olympic athletes and officials, will come to Sydney.
Australia has built the largest Olympic Stadium ever. Four jumbo jets could fit side by side in it.
Sydney’s Olympic Park will house 16,000 athletes and officials.
About 4,300 women will compete. That’s 38% of the athletes and the most women ever. For the first time, women will compete in the same number of team sports as men.
Olympic organizers will squeeze up to 24 people into some four-bedroom houses in the Olympic Village.
The Olympic Village’s 24-hour dining areas seat 5,000 people.
More than 60,000 meals a day will be served to the media, staff, volunteers, athletes and spectators.
Sydney offers free laundry service to athletes. The service’s workers expect to wash nearly 2 million pounds of linen, including more than 140,000 bath towels. A family of four would take 264 years to go through that much laundry!
The number of kangaroos in Australia--around 50 million--is at least two times as large as Australia’s human population.