The hammer throw is essentially identical, except that you have to time the release of the action button so that you're lined up with the opening at the front of the cage. This twist does add a reasonable amount of challenge to the button-pressing marathon. A nice feature of the high jump is that, after each successful attempt, the bar is raised for the next jump. Press the keys as fast as you can to swim up and back the length of the pool. Oh yeah, you do use the action key to turn around.
Platform diving is somewhat of a breath of fresh air.
You select which dive you're going to perform and then have to press a series of keys to execute each stage of the dive. Probably the most frustrating event included in Sydney 2000 is skeet shooting. The kayak slalom and sprint cycling are also a bit more engaging than some of the other events. For the cycling, there's actually a little more strategy involved. You have to pace your team during the first two laps or, no matter how fast you tap the keys on the final lap, your cyclist will not have the stamina to maintain the necessary speed through the finish.