Twenty years later, Cathy Freeman still sits at the end of the track in quiet bewilderment when reflecting on her Sydney Olympic gold medal triumph and what she went through to get there | mickgleeson
Twenty years later, Cathy Freeman still sits at the end of the track in quiet bewilderment.Now, she has a skimming appreciation of the enormity of what she did. The least of it was to win a footrace.
Since she emerged in Australia as a gifted teenager, sections of the country wrestled with how to deal with the precociously talented runner at a time when a light was being shone on Australia's relationship with its first peoples. "I wanted to shout, 'Look at me. Look at ... my skin, I am black and I am the best there is. No more shame,'" Freeman said.The film explains how her paternal grandfather Frank Fisher fought with the light horse in WW1 but when he returned to Australia his service was not recognised and he was not entitled to land grants as white soldiers were.
She had lit the flame to open the Olympic Games. She was the home country's best athlete on the track – the biggest sport at the Olympics – and she carried the torch for a change in race relations in Australia.But ultimately she was also an athlete and it was a story of running and winning. And to do that she had to confront Marie-Jose Perec, the French champion who had won the two previous Olympic gold medals.
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