by For a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was impossible to walk down a high street in Australia’s capital cities and not be swept up in a ticking parade. There was swagger, and inevitability, about our cricketers, tennis players, rugby teams and especially our Olympians. John Howard, impervious to time zones and isolated in an interchangeable array of tracksuits, was prime minister of this sporting era.
The pressure on our leg-spinners, baseliners, bowlers and all-rounders could be multiplied tenfold when it came to Kuku Yalanji and Birri Gubba woman Catherine Freeman. She has been on the national sports radar for the past ten years. She would run the great Marie-José Pérec by a few yards at the Atlanta Games. She was largely undefeated for four years.
Now, just to turn up the heat a few hundred degrees, she was chosen to light the Olympic flame. Four years earlier, when American champion distance swimmer Janet Evans walked into the Olympic Stadium, few expected her to pass the torch to Muhammad Ali. The smart money was on Mark Spitz, Edwin Moses or Michael Jordan. But Ali, quivering, glowing, was back on top of the world. In comparison, there was never a chance in the following two weeks.
Freeman’s vision was no less. As with Ali, the immediate thought was, “How can anyone top that?” Unlike Ali, Freeman had a race to prepare for. In the interviews, she was all smiles and frowns and upward inflections. But few athletes have been better at cocooning themselves and blocking out the noise. Few athletes hate losing more than she did.
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That basically helped keep her main competitor out of the country. Pérec was aloof, Amazonian, preternaturally gifted and, conveniently, French. She had nothing to prove. But she’s barely been sighted since cleaning up at the Atlanta Olympics. Finally fit and healthy again after overcoming Guillain-Barré syndrome, she walked into an ambush.
By the English tabloid standards of the day, Australian journalists tended to be polite. But they went particularly hard on the Frenchwoman. She was the only real threat to “our Katí”. They smoked her out and sent her packing with lip smacking glee. “Au Revoir Pérec,” was the headline on the front page of The Age. “Mademoiselle La Chicken” was a News Ltd offering.
What could go wrong now? Freeman’s main competitor was on the tarmac. The 400m wasn’t like the hurdles, where one errant step could send you crashing. It wasn’t like the 10,000m, where three of the East Africans could box you in. The only threat was the weighted expectation of the public, what Richard Williams in the Guardian called, “a historical burden greater than any athlete since Jesse Owens”. And the memory of the 1995 world championships, when she got herself wound up, went out too hard, blew up in the straight and lost a medal.
When Freeman walked onto the track in Sydney, it’s hard to imagine a louder roar at an Australian sporting event. She claims she barely heard it. She had a plan, and she did it to a T. She ran within herself for 300m – guarding, swimming, stalking. Still third on the bend, she turned up the wicket, running the final 100m in under 13 seconds. She undid the zip of her running outfit, pulled back the hood and simply sat. Always a perfectionist, she was disappointed with her time. She still is.
Good judges consider that evening to be the greatest exhibition of talent in the history of the track and field. It was the night of Maria Mutola, Jonathan Edwards, Tatiana Grigorieva and Stacy Dragila. When Freeman completed his victory, one of the great athletes of the 20th century, Michael Johnson, was in his six lane. Excuse Proverbs 6:5, Freeman ran like a bird out of a fowler’s snare. Johnson ran as if he had a hot poker up his back. But both had their own fluency, their own beat. Both were killers, in the Olympic final.
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Bruce McAvaney’s call on Freeman’s race was pitch perfect. He was always at his best at the Olympics. A few minutes after interviewing her, he called the final laps of the men’s 10,000m. Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie had not been beaten since 1993 but was suddenly snooker and vulnerable. McAvaney, who had a good night, made arguably the best call of his career. Gebrselassie was the “Emperor of Ethiopia”. Freeman was something else entirely, something she never asked for, something she wasn’t comfortable with. On any other night, at any other Olympics, Ethiopia’s final 200m would have been the signature point. On this night, in this stadium, it was just a bonus.
So many silly things were said after that. Opposition leader Kim Beazley called it “400 meters of national reconciliation”. For Freeman, they’re sensory memories – the feel of his fingernails on the synthetic track, the sensation of it erupting above the track, the intoxicating buzz in the stadium, the giant exhalation at the end. It is almost a quarter of a century. For Freeman and anyone watching her, it feels like yesterday.
