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Opening with a great surprise Cathy Freeman made history, and no one saw it coming
I sat with her in the back of the van on the way back to Melbourne. This was two years ago. The photo shoot had been at the Twelve Apostles, one of those Australian natural wonders that you will see again and again over the next two weeks, a succession of rock formations that stand like craggy sentries at the shore of the Indian Ocean. Cathy Freeman had posed until the sun disappeared. "You tired?" I asked. "Oh, yeah," she said. The trip back was five hours in the dark. There had been the same five-hour trip to get to the site. Three hours posing for pictures. Five hours back. I was with her for a long time. I knew the bare bones of her story when we started in the morning -- Aborigine woman, 400-meter runner, silver medal at Atlanta, Australia's big track hope for Sydney -- but I didn't know how large the story was. I didn't know what she meant in her country, how important she was, how controversial she was without even trying to be controversial. I was American. I didn't know. In bits and pieces, through the day, I learned. I learned when people, just seeing her on the street, more than two years before the start of the Sydney Games, honked their horns and shouted "Go for the gold, Cathy." I learned when they shook her hand and wished her good luck. I learned as I talked to Dave, the Australian photo assistant, as I talked to Zoe, the publicist, as I talked to the policeman who helped us set up the picture. I learned as I talked to this pleasant, quiet woman.
She was equal parts Jackie Robinson and Joan of Arc. She was a symbol. She was a hope. The national wrangle about aboriginal rights, about the place a downtrodden race of native dark people would occupy in the country's future, buzzed around her. She had made a small statement at the 1991 Commonwealth Games, running a victory lap with both an aboriginal flag and the Australian flag, and the statement had put the focus on her. She was the standard bearer for a cause. Just like that. "I mostly was just excited and happy when I ran with the flag," she said. "I was just celebrating. I never thought it would cause that kind of commotion." The left embraced her. The right, the old-line thinkers, decried her. She had new friends who wanted to push her to the front, to use her as an example of what might be. She had new enemies who downplayed her achievements, who said she was nothing more than a politically correct cover girl. Left and right. Right and left. She mostly just considered herself a runner. She talked about getting interested in track, started in the sport by her white stepfather, who bought a book on how to train an aspiring runner. She talked about winning races and liking the medals, about being sent to boarding schools on scholarship. She said she, herself, never had felt any discrimination and, in fact, did not know a lot about aboriginal culture. She said she was learning now. She had to learn. "You know who you're like?" I said. "You're like Tiger Woods. You're drawn into your role simply because of the color of your skin." "Not exactly," she said. "Tiger Woods never asked to be in his position. I asked for it when I carried the flag." I remember we talked a lot about her plans for the coming two years, about how long that time would be, about how many parts of her life had to stay together. I remember we talked about how the pressure was going to grow and grow as the night of her race drew closer. I remember -- somewhere in that ride -- thinking that I never had talked with an athlete who would be under more pressure on one night, not a Super Bowl quarterback, not a Game 7 pitcher in the World Series, not a boxer or golfer, tennis player. No one. I sat in my hotel room watching the Opening Ceremonies. The big debate, the big secret, was who was going to have the honor of lighting the torch in this country's grand xenophobic moment. And there she was. No one had predicted Cathy Freeman. Absolutely no one. "This is the most important moment in the modern history of this nation," the announcer said, stunned. Hard to believe, the ante suddenly was even larger ... Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville is in Sydney covering the
Games for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back daily to read Montville's
behind-the-scenes reports from Down Under.
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