Sydney WUDC 2000

The championships were delayed by around a week so that participants could celebrate the Millennium at home with their families. This meant that a few hardy souls risked the Millennium Bug and were able to get cheap flights on near empty planes departing on New Year’s Day.

This was seen as a championship that again raised the bar in terms of standards expected of the host. An opening night harbour cruise around the beautiful natural harbour left participants wondering how the host committee could match this standard for the full week. They did.

This was also a championship of records as Monash University became the first college to successfully defend the title, this time through Kim Little and Cathy Roussow. Monash beat University College Dublin Literary and Historical (L&H) Society (Simon Mills and Paul Brady), Glasgow University (John-Paul Toner and Eleanor Winton) and University of La Verne (JJ Rodriguez and Sean Krispinsky) in the final. This was the first time that an all-female team had won. Andy Kidd (Oxford) also became the first speaker on record to top the speaker tab two years in a row.

This History of the World Debating Championships comes in 3 parts. From 1976 to 1990 it is taken almost word for word from the 1991 Toronto WUDC Tournament booklet. Who wrote it isn't known but it was provided by Randal Horobik. At the start of the section on Worlds in 1981 is an extract from an e-mail by Clark McGinn, Convenor of Debates, GU Union 1980 -81 and 1981 and Convenor of the First World Debating Competition, 1981. The history since 1991 has been compiled initially by Colm Flynn and edited by many contributors to Wikipedia. Unfortunately Wikipedia deleted the history due to copyright concerns so we are back here. Hopefully anyone who contributed to the Wiki article before it was deleted will be happy to see their work preserved here.