As her country’s foremost Aboriginal athlete and sole track and field medal hope, the sprinter carried a unique burden of expectation in the 2000 Olympics 400m final • In pictures: relive Freeman’s Sydney triumph • The Joy of Six: sporting bravery

Looking back at the women’s 400m at the Sydney Olympics, it’s the noise that hits you. It begins when her picture appears on the big screen at the Olympic Stadium. It is deafening, unabashed, hero-worship. The hopes of a nation and a people sit on the slight figure in lane six. In front of 112,524 expectant fans Cathy Freeman, Australia’s only hope of an athletics gold medal at the 2000 Games, in that space-age hooded bodysuit, puffs out her cheeks and prepares for the biggest race of her life.

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Freeman’s path to that start line had been a long one and her journey came to be seen as symbolic of the Aboriginal people’s journey from persecuted natives to Australian equals. She became the icon of national unity. “She has come to symbolise the painless reconciliation between black and white,” said David Rowe, professor of media and cultural studies and Australia’s University of Newcastle, at the time. “She stands for the Sydney Olympics.”

The often painful story of Australia’s indigenous peoples is one full of massacres, theft and state-approved racism, the last of which affected Freeman directly. Her grandmother was one of the Stolen Generation, the policy by which Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents and placed with white families. “I’ll never know who my grandfather was, I didn’t know who my great-grandmother was, and that can never be replaced,” said Freeman. “All that pain is very strong and generations have felt it.”

Throughout her career Freeman was proud to fly the Aboriginal flag, literally as well as metaphorically, even if not everyone approved. Following her gold medal in the 400m at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, she carried the Aboriginal flag on her lap of honour. “It was no big deal,” said Freeman. “I was just somebody who wanted to display a flag that everybody knew about and nobody ever saw. It’s not a non-Australian flag, it’s an indigenous Australian flag.” The Australian Commonwealth Association idiotically disagreed and the young Freeman was reprimanded.

The domestic issues had threatened Sydney’s very attempt to host the Games. In 1992 detailed dossiers on the mistreatment of Aborigines were sent to the rival bid committees of Beijing, Brasilia, Istanbul, Manchester, Milan and Tashkent by campaign groups determined Australia would not host the Olympics while it was a “racist state”. “We don’t support the Olympic bid while Aboriginal people in this country are still being subjected to genocidal practices,” said Jenny Munro of the Metropolitan Land Council of Sydney. Later campaign groups would also ask Freeman to boycott the Games. “If you take running away from me, you take away a huge part of my life,” she replied. “People say we should be protesting for white people taking indigenous lives away. Why turn around and do the same to one of our own? Everyone deserves to be free.” In 1993, nevertheless, Sydney narrowly beat Beijing for the right to host the 2000 Games.

By that time Freeman had already made an impact on the athletics scene, as a 16-year-old becoming the first Aborigine to win a Commonwealth Games gold in the 4x100m relay in 1990. She followed it up with gold (and that reprimand) in the 400m in 1994, a fourth-place finish in the world championships in Gothenburg in 1995 and an Olympic silver medal in 1996 in Atlanta. On the latter two occasions France’s Marie-José Pérec, a sprinting phenomenon on her day, took gold. As the 90s progressed, though, Freeman took the upper hand, winning the world title in 1997 and 1999. On neither occasion did Pérec compete, but the reigning champ was due to be on the start line in Sydney.

Pérec was seen as the only woman who could deny Freeman, and Australia, their gold. She was Darth Vader to Freeman’s Skywalker, Lex Luthor to Australia’s Superwoman. Pérec hoped to take advantage if Freeman crumbled under the pressure, but instead it was the French athlete who cracked. After arriving in Sydney for the Games, she complained about being hounded by the media, said she was “freaking out” as the event neared and eventually fled the country after claiming to have been threatened at her hotel.

That left the way clear, but arguably ratcheted up the pressure another notch. With Pérec out of the way there were no excuses. To avoid the hysteria at home Freeman had prepared for the Games just off the M4 at Eton. It was, Freeman admitted, a bolthole of peace, tranquillity and solitude. But once she returned to Australia there could be no doubt about the pressure. Travellers arriving at Sydney airport were greeted by a giant Freeman advertising poster and other colossal pictures of her could be found around the city.

At the spectacular opening ceremony, Freeman lit the flame (a watery role that meant she ended the ceremony shivering).

“She has emerged as a symbol of Australia’s edgy transformation from the white male-dominated imperial outpost that staged the 1956 Olympics to the multicultural melting pot of 2000,” wrote Matthew Engel in these pages. On the day of the final, the Sydney Morning Herald’s front-page headline was: “The race of our lives.” Cathy had become “Our Cathy”.

The heats went without a hitch. She was fifth fastest overall in the first stage after cruising round in 51.63sec. In the second round she again won her heat, beating Falilat Ogunkoya, the bronze medallist in Atlanta in the process, in 50.31sec. In the semis she again thrilled a nervous crowd with a time of 50.01sec, comfortably the fastest of the round.

And so to Monday 25 September 2000 and that cauldron of noise. They get away first time, Freeman running conservatively, almost carefully. At 200m she’s in the lead or close to it, then the noise dips a fraction as the crowd waits for the end of the stagger and the true picture to emerge. The roar returns as Freeman emerges perhaps third – behind Katharine Merry and Lorraine Graham in lanes three and four – as they enter the home straight. By 60m out she’s won it. As the lactic acid builds up in the legs of her adversaries, Freeman powers clear, the final strides run as if there’s a wall to be crashed through on the finish line. The Australian commentator Bruce McAvaney and pundit Raelene Boyle, an Olympic silver medallist in 1968 and 1972, summon words that remain famous in Australia. “What a legend!” says McAvaney. “What a champion!” “What a relief,” adds Boyle.

Such was the lifting of pressure it’s amazing Freeman didn’t suffer a bout of the bends. The look on her face immediately after crossing the line is certainly remarkable, as if the utter joy is too much to take in, too overwhelming. There’s the briefest shake of the head before she bows and then crumples to her haunches. She’s on the floor for well over a minute but the noise refuses to relent. Then finally she’s up, smiling and off for the lap of honour, an Australian and an Aboriginal flag in her hand.

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As Katharine Merry said afterwards, even the bogong moths flew off in shock. When the gun went off to start the women’s 400 metres final, the answering roar of 112,524 people could probably have been heard all the way to Queensland, where the creatures that have plagued Stadium Australia this week began their migration. And the sparkle of the flashbulbs that circled the track might very well have been visible from the moon.

The noise and the sparkle lasted 49.11sec, which was how long it took Cathy Freeman to run her way to a gold medal and into Australian legend, ahead of Lorraine Graham of Jamaica and Merry of Britain in the silver and bronze medal positions. And Freeman did it while carrying what was perhaps a greater historical burden than any athlete since Jesse Owens, propelled by the cheers of a crowd whose size was an all-time record for an Olympic stadium event.

By accepting a role which cast her as the symbol of the Aboriginal people’s desire for retrospective and present justice, the 27-year-old Freeman might have seemed to be adding lead weights to her running shoes. But so deep is her integrity and so profound her involvement in an issue which shaped her own family’s story that she was able to confront a degree of expectation which would surely have crushed a lesser person.

There is nothing glib or rhetorical about Freeman’s way of expressing her beliefs. After the race she gently sidestepped an invitation to say that she had reached her version of Aboriginal “dreamtime”, but she was not about to start avoiding the implications of her win.

“My family are a constant reminder of my Aboriginal heritage,” she said, “and it gave me a big thrill to make them so happy.” After receiving her gold medal, she ran over to the stands to present her bouquet to her mother.

Australia will have to wait and see whether or not its consciousness is really changed by her victory and by her equally symbolic performance in lighting the Olympic flame 10 days ago. The tone of some of the letters in the local papers suggests that enlightenment is not universal, and that genuine “reconciliation” is still some way off. “What’s happened tonight probably won’t make much difference to people’s attitudes, or to the politicians,” Freeman said. “All I know is that I made a lot of people happy. And I’m happy.”

On the track, the purity of her performance was its own reward. Wearing a one-piece skinsuit in the pale green, yellow and white of Australia, she looked like a beautiful sprite. The hood framed her expressive face, emphasising the deep breath and the grimace of determination before she lowered herself into the starting blocks.

Following the instruction of her coach, Peter Fortune, she took the first half of the race relatively easily and after 300 metres she was lying a mere third, 0.14sec down on Graham and 0.08sec on Merry. Then she turned it on, running the last 100 metres in an astonishing 12.97sec to finish four metres ahead of Graham, who crossed the line another metre in front of the impressive Merry.

Having achieved her ambition, Freeman did not leap in the air or otherwise salute her own achievement in the way of most contemporary athletes. She pulled down the zip of her suit, pulled back the hood and simply sat down on the track. Blank-faced, she looked as though she had been drained of all sensation. But later, when she had regathered her faculties, she said that the dominant feeling had been one of relief. “I was totally overwhelmed because I could feel the crowd all around me, all their emotions, all that happiness and joy. I just had to sit down.”

She was asked if things could get any better than this. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I have a fairly creative imagination, but I can’t think of anything better right now.”

The job of lighting the flame at the conclusion of the spectacular opening ceremony had given her a few worries, not all of them connected with the faulty mechanism of the circle of fire in which she stood, watched by a worldwide audience of billions.

“I decided I’d make a big effort to relax, not get too emotional or buy into the hype, and to keep my life simple and stick to my priorities. Running comes more naturally to me than the creative stuff.”

Despite the dramatic withdrawal of Marie-José Pérec, the Olympic champion in Atlanta, the quality of the race was remarkable. Freeman produced her season’s best time, while Graham and Merry both ran personal bests, in 49.58sec and 49.72sec respectively, as did Donna Fraser, the other British woman in the race, who clocked 49.79sec. Merry and Fraser were both going below 50sec for the first time, and at the ages of 26 and 27 respectively they can look forward to further improvement.

“Me and Donna go back a long way,” the exhilarated Merry said. “If it had been the other way round, with Donna on the rostrum and me fourth, I’d still be pleased. I’ve known Cathy the same length of time, and there’s nobody in athletics I respect more. I had no illusions. Cathy on form with 110,000 people behind her was a pretty hard mountain to shift.

“I like Cathy as a person and when we crossed the line I just shook her hand and said: ‘You’re awesome.’ She deserves everything she’s got. We’ve all had our hard times this year, and she’s had her fair share. I’m 110% pleased for her. She’s a great girl.”

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Merry has been bothered by sinus trouble over the past couple of years, and will need a second operation soon. “But you can’t let something like that stop you,” she said. “I’m ecstatic. The first part of my season I believed I could get on the rostrum in Sydney. In June I didn’t know if I’d even be here. So I’m delighted with the medal, and with my time. I’ve been trying to break 50 seconds all year.”

She had spent the morning with her coach, Linford Christie, just hanging out, playing table tennis and chatting. “We didn’t talk about the race. All he said was: ‘I’m not going to tell you how to run because you know how you’re going to run.’ But when I walked out on to the track I was so nervous. All I could hear was ‘Go, Cathy! Go, Cathy!’ Then I heard this big voice shouting ‘C’mon, Christmas! C’mon, Christmas!’ That made me laugh.

“Only Linford calls me Christmas. So I knew where he was sitting and as soon as I’d finished the race I ran over to him and said: ‘This one was for you.’ Everything was for Linford this trip. I’m so glad I got a medal for him. He wanted to get a woman on the rostrum at an Olympics and I’m just glad it was me.”

Could she summarise his contribution to her performance?

“I could, but I’d begin to cry. He’s the best.”

Richard Williams