The Olympic Pins
The Olympic Pins
Somewhere in the house, tucked away among things that have survived several moves, are the little Olympic pins I collected during the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Also some of the lanyards worn by my family when we attended Olympic events.
They are not worth a fortune to me. They are worth something else.
They take me back to a time when my children were young, when Australia was getting ready for the biggest sporting event it had ever hosted, and when I was a relatively young father trying to make a life in a country that had become home only a few years earlier.
In 1999, I moved from Standard Chartered Bank to AMP.
My young family was living in Glenwood, NSW. We had come to Australia from Dubai less than a decade ago as immigrants. I was working as an e-Channels Manager, looking after AMP’s online presence and telephone banking systems.
The Olympics had absolutely nothing to do with my job.
Except that AMP was one of the principal sponsors of the Sydney Olympics.
That changed everything.
Every other day there seemed to be something about the Olympics on the AMP people portal. The torch was travelling through the UK, Europe and Asia. There were stories about athletes, venues, preparations and sponsorships.
The Olympic buzz came into work with us every morning.
And I carried it home.
I had four children then. One teenager, two in their pre-teens and the youngest only about six.
They could not escape the Olympics either.
Neither could anyone else in Australia.
The whole country was going Olympic mad.
Television, newspapers, radio, billboards, shops, workplaces. Everywhere you looked, there was something about Sydney 2000.
The expression I kept hearing was that this was going to be bigger than Ben-Hur.
I knew Ben-Hur well. I had watched the movie as a boy in Sri Lanka.
But nobody really knew how big these Olympics were going to be.
We were about to find out.
The pins
The pins were part of AMP’s branding exercise.
They were handed out at work. I would get some because I was there at the right time, and then I would get more whenever I attended a work function.
Before long, they were everywhere.
People wore AMP Olympic pins on their clothes at work. Some wore several. Some seemed determined to cover the whole front of their jackets.
There was a certain pride in it.
AMP was an Australian icon then, and being an AMP employee carried a bit of that pride. You went home wearing your pin almost as if you were saying to the world, I work for AMP.
I was more or less a one-pin man.
One pin was enough for me.
But I kept the others.
The pins were not just pieces of metal. They were part of the excitement. People collected them, exchanged them and displayed them. Some were quite rare, and I remember hearing that some were worth around $200.
I never thought of them as an investment.
I simply kept getting them.
That is how collections often begin.
You don’t decide to collect something. You just don’t throw it away.
Sydney gets ready
As the Olympics got closer, the excitement became almost ridiculous.
There was a daily countdown on television and in the newspapers.
Five hundred days to go.
Three hundred days.
One hundred.
The numbers kept getting smaller.
And the torch was making its way around the world and eventually around Australia.
At AMP, we also had preferential access to Olympic tickets and discounts for some events. There were also pre-Olympic events in Sydney when the torch was doing the rounds.
For a family of six, Olympic tickets were not exactly cheap.
But I was working for the principal sponsor.
So I took advantage of it.
Preliminary events. Torch events. Swimming. Athletics. Whatever I thought the children would enjoy.
I wanted them to experience it.
This was not going to happen again while they were children.
Then Sydney changed
The Olympics finally arrived in September 2000.
Sydney was unbelievable.
I had never seen the city like that.
People were happy.
Strangers smiled at each other.
On trains, in the CBD, in the suburbs, everywhere you went there was a feeling that something special was happening.
Australians had taken ownership of the Games.
It wasn’t just an event being held in Sydney.
It felt as if the whole country was participating.
And then came the torch relay.
I followed it quite closely as it travelled around Australia. The torch had started its Australian journey in Western Australia and eventually made its way to Sydney.
My kids held that torch, or perhaps it was a replica.
We all knew who would light the cauldron.
Cathy Freeman.
And when she finally walked into the stadium and lit it, the moment felt much bigger than sport.
Then came the athletics.
Cathy Freeman won the gold medal in the 400 metres.
I remember the atmosphere.
It was insane.
People were hugging strangers. People were crying. There was this feeling that Australia had just shared something together that would stay with us.
It was ballistic.
Unbelievable.
For a few days, it seemed that nothing else mattered.
The pins and lanyards survived
Looking back now, the pins are almost insignificant.
Little pieces of Olympic memorabilia.
But they survived.
They survived several decades, several houses and the changing lives of four children.
I did not make a fortune from them.
I don’t even know what the whole collection is worth today.
The pins are probably my favourites.
I think because the torch was the beginning of the story for me.
It connected the Games to the whole country.
The relay, the countdown, the opening ceremony, Cathy Freeman, the gold medal.
All of it is somehow inside those little pins.
Brisbane 2032
And now Australia is preparing for another Olympics.
Brisbane 2032.
Thirty-two years after Sydney.
That number feels strange.
When Sydney happened, I was a young father with four children.
When Brisbane happens, I will be an ageing grandfather.
All eight of my grandchildren, with their parents, will be around.
I would like to go to at least one event and soak in the atmosphere.
Just as a spectator.
I don’t think I will be collecting pins or lanyards this time.
Times have changed.
The children who watched Sydney 2000 with me are now adults with children of their own.
The little ones who once ran around the house with Olympic excitement are now parents.
And I am the grandfather watching from the other side of the room.
That is what I like about these pins.
They have outlasted the Olympics.
They have outlasted the workplace where I got them.
They have outlasted the young father who collected them.
But they still belong to that particular moment in our lives.
My children were young.
Australia was excited.
Sydney was the centre of the world for a couple of weeks.
And I was there, working at AMP, bringing the Olympic buzz home to my family.
I don’t plan to sell the pins.
They are for my children.
And one day, for my grandchildren.
Perhaps I will hand them to one of them and tell them about Sydney 2000.
About their parents when they were children.
About their grandfather when he was still a young dad.
About Cathy Freeman.
About the torch.
About the crazy days when the whole country seemed to smile at the same time.
And perhaps the pins will begin another life.
Not as Olympic memorabilia.
But as family history.
Sometimes that is what survives.
Not the big things.
The little things we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw away.
Written by Denzil Jayasinghe
Tech professional with an artist’s eye and a storyteller’s instinct. I capture moments through code, images, and words. In two words: "creative craftsman."
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