FACTOIDS
Full Name: Catherine Freeman
Nickname: Cathy
Birthday: February 16, 1973
Height: 5’3”
Hometown: Mackay, Queensland, Australia
Sports: Track & Field
Profile
Cathy Freeman is the colossus of Australian athletics. Others in the team have legitimate medal hopes, but none burn as bright as Freeman’s.
Twice she has been world champion over 400 metres. In 1996 in Atlanta she won an Olympic silver medal behind the great Frenchwoman Marie-Jose Perec.
And yet there is so much more to admire about Freeman than her ability over 400 metres.
She is humble, self-effacing, charming, effervescent, engaging, funny. She also accepts her position as a role model - for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike - with pride and dignity.
For someone so young - she will be 27 when the Sydney Games begin - she has shown an amazing ability to soak up pressure.
At 16 Freeman won a Commonwealth Games gold medal as part of the 4x100 metres relay team. The same year - 1990 - she was named Young Australian of the Year, the following year she became Aboriginal Athlete of the Year.
The spotlight has shone ever brighter since, and there have been times when she has been burned.
Like in 1994, when a proud Freeman paraded both the Australian and the Aboriginal flags around the stadium in Victoria after her wins in the 200m and 400m events.
For Freeman, it was the act of a patriotic Australian and a proud Aborigine. But that’s not how it was seen by some in officialdom, Arthur Tunstall most famously among them.
To an extent, this polarised Freeman in the minds of Australians, but even more than that, it raised her profile through the roof. Everyone knew who Cathy Freeman was.
In Atlanta, she was Australia’s only real gold medal hope, and to win she would have had to beat Perec, the 1992 gold medallist over 400m.
Freeman ran the race of her life - making her the sixth fastest woman over the distance in history - but it was not enough for gold.
However, her silver made her the most successful Australian runner at Olympic level, male or female, since Debbie Flintoff-King's gold at Seoul in 1988.
