Costa Rica at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Costa Rica competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London from 27 July to 12 August 2012. This was the nation's fourteenth appearance at the Olympics, excluding four occasions from its national debut in 1936. Comité Olímpico de Costa Rica sent a total of 11 athletes to the Games, 8 men and 3 women, to compete in 6 sports. Three of its athletes made their second consecutive Olympic appearance, including marathon runner Gabriela Traña, the nation's flag bearer at the opening ceremony. Costa Rica, failed to win a single Olympic medal for the third consecutive time. Costa Rican athletes have so far achieved qualifying standards in the following athletics events: KeyNote–Ranks given for track events are within the athlete's heat only Q = Qualified for the next round q = Qualified for the next round as a fastest loser or, in field events, by position without achieving the qualifying target NR = National record N/A = Round not applicable for the event Bye = Athlete not required to compete in round MenWomen MenWomen Costa Rica qualified one man.
Costa Rica qualified the following athletes
Claudia Poll
Claudia Maria Poll Ahrens is a Costa Rican swimmer who competes in the 200 m to 800 m freestyle events. She is Costa Rica's only Olympic gold-medalist, having won the country's first Olympic gold medals at the 1996 Olympics in the 200 meter freestyle, she is a multiple national record holder in the freestyle events. Her sister, won Costa Rica's first Olympic medal, the silver medal, at the 1988 Games; as of 2017, Claudia and Silvia are the only Costa Ricans to have won a medal at an Olympics. Claudia competed at the 2000 Olympics, where she won two bronze medals. Moreover, she was the first person from Central America to win a gold medal, the only person to do so, until the 2008 Olympic Games when Irving Saladino of Panama won a gold medal. Claudia Poll began swimming in 1979 under coach Francisco Rivas and became one of the best in Central America, winning many regional titles. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics she won the gold medal in the 200 m freestyle event; the win was the first gold medal for Costa Rica in the Summer Olympic Games.
It was a surprising win. Dagmar Hase from Germany, won the bronze. In 1997, she was named by Swimming World Magazine as the Female Swimmer of the Year. At the Sydney 2000, Poll won two bronze medals. In Athens 2004, she just missed out on the 400 m freestyle finishing ninth in the heats. In 2002, she was given a four-year doping ban after a failed test for norandrosterone, a metabolite the steroid nandrolone, her ban was reduced by FINA to two years. Poll protested her innocence. At the 2006 Central American and Caribbean Games, she set the Games Records in the 200 and 400 freestyles, bettering the time her sister Silvia set at the 1986 Central American and Caribbean Games. Poll served as a swimming analyst for the U. S. Telemundo network's Spanish-language coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, though she and most of the Telemundo broadcast crew performed their duties at the network's studios in Hialeah, accompanied by video provided by Olympic Broadcasting Services. Declared "Honor Citizen" by the Costa Rican Congress in 1996.
Claudia's parents are both German. Claudia and her sister Silvia were both born in Managua, but moved shortly after Claudia’s birth in 1972. Political tensions were rising and after an earthquake that shook the city, the family decided it would be safest to move to Costa Rica. Claudia graduated in Business Administration from the Universidad Internacional de las Américas, San José, Costa Rica, in 1998. Poll became a mother for the first time on August 8, 2007, her daughter's name is Cecilia. Claudia's older sister Silvia Poll was a competitive swimmer who won a silver medal in 1988, Costa Rica's first Olympic medal. List of doping cases in sport World record progression 200 metres freestyle World record progression 400 metres freestyle
Cycling at the 2000 Summer Olympics
At the 2000 Summer Olympics, 3 different bicycle racing disciplines were contested: Road cycling, track cycling, mountain biking. OR = Olympic record, WR = World record Sources Official Olympic Report
Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics
The swimming competitions at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney took place from 16 to 23 September 2000 at the Sydney International Aquatic Centre in Homebush Bay. It featured 32 events, a total of 954 swimmers from 150 nations; the swimming program for 2000 was expanded from 1996, with the inclusion of the semifinal phase in each of the events except for some special cases. Long-distance swimming events and all relays still maintained the old format with only two phases: heats and final; because of the radical changes in the competition format, it was extended into an eight-day program and thereby continued into the present era. Swimmers from the United States were the most successful, winning 14 golds, 8 silver, 11 bronze to lead the overall medal count with 33. Meanwhile, Australia had produced a total of 18 medals to claim the second spot in the tally. A total of fourteen world records and thirty-eight Olympic records were set during the competition; the following events were contested: Freestyle: 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500.
M = Morning session, E = Evening session A total of 954 swimmers from 150 nations would compete in swimming events at these Olympic Games. Aruba, Côte d'Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Laos, Federated States of Micronesia, Niger, Rwanda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Tajikistan made their official debut in swimming. Nations with swimmers at the Games are: * Swimmers who participated in the heats only and received medals. * Swimmers who participated in the heats only and received medals. Official Olympic Report 2000 Sydney Olympics Coverage – ABC News Australia
Sydney
Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Port Jackson and extends about 70 km on its periphery towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west. Sydney is made up of 40 local government areas and 15 contiguous regions. Residents of the city are known as "Sydneysiders"; as of June 2017, Sydney's estimated metropolitan population was 5,230,330 and is home to 65% of the state's population. Indigenous Australians have inhabited the Sydney area for at least 30,000 years, thousands of engravings remain throughout the region, making it one of the richest in Australia in terms of Aboriginal archaeological sites. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to chart the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay and inspiring British interest in the area.
In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Phillip named the city Sydney in recognition of 1st Viscount Sydney. Penal transportation to New South Wales ended soon after Sydney was incorporated as a city in 1842. A gold rush occurred in the colony in 1851, over the next century, Sydney transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural and economic centre. After World War II, it experienced mass migration and became one of the most multicultural cities in the world. At the time of the 2011 census, more than 250 different languages were spoken in Sydney. In the 2016 Census, about 35.8% of residents spoke a language other than English at home. Furthermore, 45.4% of the population reported having been born overseas, making Sydney the 3rd largest foreign born population of any city in the world after London and New York City, respectively. Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, the 2018 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranks Sydney tenth in the world in terms of quality of living, making it one of the most livable cities.
It is classified as an Alpha+ World City by Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has an advanced market economy with strengths in finance and tourism. There is a significant concentration of foreign banks and multinational corporations in Sydney and the city is promoted as Australia's financial capital and one of Asia Pacific's leading financial hubs. Established in 1850, the University of Sydney is Australia's first university and is regarded as one of the world's leading universities. Sydney is home to the oldest library in Australia, State Library of New South Wales, opened in 1826. Sydney has hosted major international sporting events such as the 2000 Summer Olympics; the city is among the top fifteen most-visited cities in the world, with millions of tourists coming each year to see the city's landmarks. Boasting over 1,000,000 ha of nature reserves and parks, its notable natural features include Sydney Harbour, the Royal National Park, Royal Botanic Garden and Hyde Park, the oldest parkland in the country.
Built attractions such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the World Heritage-listed Sydney Opera House are well known to international visitors. The main passenger airport serving the metropolitan area is Kingsford-Smith Airport, one of the world's oldest continually operating airports. Established in 1906, Central station, the largest and busiest railway station in the state, is the main hub of the city's rail network; the first people to inhabit the area now known as Sydney were indigenous Australians having migrated from northern Australia and before that from southeast Asia. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago. However, numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments that were dated from 45,000 to 50,000 years BP, which would indicate that there was human settlement in Sydney earlier than thought; the first meeting between the native people and the British occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula and encountered the Gweagal clan.
He noted in his journal that they were somewhat hostile towards the foreign visitors. Cook was not commissioned to start a settlement, he spent a short time collecting food and conducting scientific observations before continuing further north along the east coast of Australia and claiming the new land he had discovered for Britain. Prior to the arrival of the British there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in Sydney from as many as 29 different clans; the earliest British settlers called the natives Eora people. "Eora" is the term the indigenous population used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is "from this place". Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan; the principal language groups were Darug and Dharawal. The earliest Europeans to visit the area noted that the indigenous people were conducting activities such as camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells, cooking fish. Britain—before that, England—and Ireland had for a long time been sending their convicts across the Atlantic to the American colonies.
That trade was ended with the Declaration of Independence by the United States in 1776. Britain decided in 1786 to found a new penal outpost in the territory discovered by Cook some 16 years ear
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Costa Rica
Costa Rica the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around 5 million in a land area of 51,060 square kilometers. An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José with around 2 million people in the surrounding metropolitan area; the sovereign state of Costa Rica is a unitary presidential constitutional republic. It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, for its educated workforce, most of whom speak English; the country spends 6.9% of its budget on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance, corporate services for foreign companies and ecotourism. Many foreign manufacturing and services companies operate in Costa Rica's Free Trade Zones where they benefit from investment and tax incentives.
Costa Rica was facing a market liquidity crisis in 2017 due to a growing budget deficit. By August 2017, the Treasury was having difficulty paying its obligations. Other challenges facing the country in its attempts to improve the economy by increasing foreign investment include a poor infrastructure and a need to improve public sector efficiency. Costa Rica was sparsely inhabited by indigenous peoples before coming under Spanish rule in the 16th century, it remained a peripheral colony of the empire until independence as part of the First Mexican Empire, followed by membership in the United Provinces of Central America, from which it formally declared independence in 1847. Since Costa Rica has remained among the most stable and progressive nations in Latin America. Following the brief Costa Rican Civil War, it permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming one of only a few sovereign nations without a standing army; the country has performed favorably in the Human Development Index, placing 69th in the world as of 2015, among the highest of any Latin American nation.
It has been cited by the United Nations Development Programme as having attained much higher human development than other countries at the same income levels, with a better record on human development and inequality than the median of the region. Costa Rica has progressive environmental policies, it is the only country to meet all five UNDP criteria established to measure environmental sustainability. It was ranked 42nd in the world, third in the Americas, in the 2016 Environmental Performance Index, was twice ranked the best performing country in the New Economics Foundation's Happy Planet Index, which measures environmental sustainability, was identified by the NEF as the greenest country in the world in 2009. Costa Rica plans to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021. By 2016, 98.1% of its electricity was generated from green sources hydro, solar and biomass. Historians have classified the indigenous people of Costa Rica as belonging to the Intermediate Area, where the peripheries of the Mesoamerican and Andean native cultures overlapped.
More pre-Columbian Costa Rica has been described as part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Stone tools, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Costa Rica, are associated with the arrival of various groups of hunter-gatherers about 10,000 to 7,000 years BCE in the Turrialba Valley; the presence of Clovis culture type spearheads and arrows from South America opens the possibility that, in this area, two different cultures coexisted. Agriculture became evident in the populations, they grew tubers and roots. For the first and second millennia BCE there were settled farming communities; these were small and scattered, although the timing of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as the main livelihood in the territory is still unknown. The earliest use of pottery appears around 2,000 to 3,000 BCE. Shards of pots, cylindrical vases, platters and other forms of vases decorated with grooves and some modelled after animals have been found; the impact of indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been small compared to other nations, since the country lacked a strong native civilization to begin with.
Most of the native population was absorbed into the Spanish-speaking colonial society through inter-marriage, except for some small remnants, the most significant of which are the Bribri and Boruca tribes who still inhabit the mountains of the Cordillera de Talamanca, in the southeastern part of Costa Rica, near the frontier with Panama. The name la costa rica, meaning "rich coast" in the Spanish language, was in some accounts first applied by Christopher Columbus, who sailed to the eastern shores of Costa Rica during his final voyage in 1502, reported vast quantities of gold jewelry worn by natives; the name may have come from conquistador Gil González Dávila, who landed on the west coast in 1522, encountered natives, appropriated some of their gold. During most of the colonial period, Costa Rica was the southernmost province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, nominally part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In practice, the captaincy general was a autonomous entity within the Spanish Empire.
Costa Rica's distance from the capital of the captaincy in Guatemala, its legal prohibition under Spanish law from trade with its southern neighbor Panama part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, lack of r
Bronze
Bronze Medal)
