In May 2024 Great Big Events was acquired by RWS Global and now operates as RWS Global Sports
Established in 1995, Great Big Events is an international Sport Presentation and Event Management company with offices in Australia, United Kingdom, North America and the Middle East.
The company predominantly works with international sporting events as well as cultural, public and government events. Amongst its many notable sporting achievements, the company has produced the Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, alongside five Commonwealth Games and over 50 World Cups and 40 World Championships across various sports.
The company has in-house services including Sport Presentation, Vision and Content Creation, App Development, Technical Management, Music Production and Ceremonies.
GBE have partnered with a number of International Federations on consultation projects to create Sport Presentation guidelines and templates.
Great Big Events has been responsible for Sport Presentation in more than 55 sports at an international level.[ citation needed ]
Events delivered include:
The 2000 Summer Paralympic Games or the XI Summer Paralympics were held in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, between 18 and 29 October. The Sydney Paralympics was last time that the Summer Paralympics were organized by two different Organizing Committees. In this edition, a record 3,801 athletes from 120 National Paralympic Committees participated in 551 events in 18 sports, and until the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne, it was the second largest sporting event ever until that date held in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. Sydney was the eighth city to host the Olympics and the Paralympics on same venues at the same year, and the first since Barcelona 1992 that they were organized in complete conjunction with the Olympics. They were also the first Paralympic Games outside the Northern Hemisphere and also in Oceania.
Anna Maree Devenish Meares is an Australian retired track cyclist. She currently resides in Adelaide in South Australia where the Australian Institute of Sport's Track Cycling program has its headquarters at the Adelaide Super-Drome.
Kurt Harry Fearnley, is an Australian wheelchair racer, who has won gold medals at the Paralympic Games and crawled the Kokoda Track without a wheelchair. He has a congenital disorder called sacral agenesis which prevented fetal development of certain parts of his lower spine and all of his sacrum. In Paralympic events he is classified in the T54 classification. He focuses on long and middle-distance wheelchair races, and has also won medals in sprint relays. He participated in the 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 Summer Paralympic Games, finishing his Paralympic Games career with thirteen medals. He won a gold and silver medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and was the Australian flag bearer at the closing ceremony.
A demonstration sport, or exhibition sport, is a sport which is played to promote it, rather than as part of standard medal competition. This occurs commonly during the Olympic Games, but may also occur at other sporting events.
Loudy Wiggins is a former Australian diver. She was born in Haifa to Palestinian Christian parents and moved to Australia when she was 3 years old.
Sport is an important part of Australia that dates back to the early colonial period. Australian rules football, rugby league, rugby union, association football, cricket and tennis are among the earliest organised sports in Australia. Sport has shaped the Australian national identity through events such as the Melbourne Cup and the America's Cup. Australia also holds the record for the largest attendance at a Rugby Union match with almost 110,000 spectators watching the Wallabies play the All Blacks in 2000.
Geoffrey Andrew Huegill is an Australian swimmer and dual Olympian who won seventy-two international medals, including two medals in Olympics and six world champion titles, throughout his career. He held eight world records, including 50 metres butterfly.
The most popular sport in Russia is soccer. According to Yandex search analysis results rating of the most popular sports among Russians: "Football topped the list of the most popular sports in Russia" with 5 to 10 million requests. Ice hockey came in second with handball, basketball, futsal, boxing, auto racing, volleyball, athletics, tennis, and chess rounding out the top ten rankings. Other popular sports include bandy, biathlon, figure skating, weightlifting, gymnastics, wrestling, martial arts, rugby union, and skiing.
Greece has risen to prominence in a number of sporting areas in recent decades. Football in particular has seen a rapid transformation, with the Greece national football team winning the UEFA Euro 2004. Many Greek athletes have also achieved significant success and have won world and olympic titles in numerous sports during the years, such as basketball, wrestling, water polo, athletics, weightlifting, with many of them becoming international stars inside their sports. The successful organisation of the Athens 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games led also to the further development of many sports and has led to the creation of many world class sport venues all over Greece and especially in Athens. Greek athletes have won a total 169 medals for Greece in 17 different Olympic sports at the Summer Olympic Games, including the Intercalated Games, an achievement which makes Greece one of the top nations globally, in the world's rankings of medals per capital
Australia sent a delegation to compete at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing. The country sent 167 athletes in 13 sports and 122 officials. It was the country's largest ever Paralympic delegation to an away Games. The team sent to Beijing was described as the emergence of the new generation of Australian athletes with 56 percent of the team attending their first Paralympic Games. The delegation's chef de mission was Darren Peters.
Evan George O'Hanlon, is an Australian Paralympic athlete, who competes mainly in category T38 sprint events. He has won five gold medals at two Paralympic Games – 2008 Beijing and 2012 London. He also represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics and 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, winning a silver medal and a bronze medal respectively. In winning the bronze medal in the Men's 100m T38 at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai, O'Hanlon became Australia's most successful male athlete with a disability. His bronze medal took him to 12 medals in five world championships – one more than four-time Paralympian Neil Fuller.
Ellie Victoria Cole, is an Australian retired Paralympic swimmer and wheelchair basketball player. After having her leg amputated due to cancer, she trained in swimming as part of her rehabilitation program and progressed more rapidly than instructors had predicted. She began competitive swimming in 2003 and first competed internationally at the 2006 IPC Swimming World Championships, where she won a silver medal. Since then, she has won medals in the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, the Commonwealth Games, the Paralympic Games, the IPC Swimming World Championships, and various national championships.
Angela Ballard is an Australian Paralympic athlete who competes in T53 wheelchair sprint events. She became a paraplegic at age 7 due to a car accident.
Gregory Stephen Smith, OAM is an Australian Paralympic athlete and wheelchair rugby player who won three gold medals in athletics at the 2000 Summer Paralympics, and a gold medal in wheelchair rugby at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, where he was the flag bearer at the opening ceremony.
Brendan John Burkett, OAM is an Australian swimmer who won five medals at four Paralympics and a silver medal at the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games.
Sam Julian Bramham, OAM is an Australian Paralympic swimmer. He competed at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Paralympics. Between those two Games, he won two gold medals, two silver medals and a bronze medal. In 2014 Bramham entered the eleventh season of Big Brother Australia and was a contestant in the first season of Australian Ninja Warrior in 2017.
The Australian men's Paralympic soccer team represents Australia in international 7-a-side competitions. Officially nicknamed the Pararoos, the team is currently controlled by the governing body for soccer in Australia, Football Australia (FA), which are a member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the regional ASEAN Football Federation (AFF).
Ben Tudhope is an Australian Paralympian who has competed in para-snowboard cross at three Winter Paralympics 2014 to 2022. His selection at the age of 14 at the 2014 Winter Paralympics meant that he became Australia's youngest Winter Paralympian, replacing Michael Milton. He was the youngest competitor at the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games from any country. He also competed at the 2018 Winter Paralympics. At the 2022 Winter Paralympics, he won the bronze medal in the Men's Snowboard Cross SB-LL2.
Brisbane 2032 is a successful bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics by the city of Brisbane and the Australian Olympic Committee. On 10 June 2021, the bid won IOC board approval and is expected to host the 2032 Summer Olympics. Brisbane officially received the rights to host the Olympics on 21 July 2021. Brisbane became the first host city to win the bid unopposed since 1984.