10 years after: A Column by Len Johnson

In case you have not been paying attention, the 10^th anniversary of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games was celebrated last week on 15 September.

If you’re a track and field fan, however, the more significant tenth anniversary comes this weekend. On Saturday, 25 September, it will be 10 years to the day since Cathy Freeman won the gold medal in the 400 metres, capping one of the most magnificent days in Olympic history.

Superlatives are overworked at Olympic Games time when, to paraphrase Roy and H.G., too many greatest moments are barely enough.

But Monday, 25 September, 2000 was one of the greatest days in the history of Olympic competition. Arguably, it could not have happened without Freeman’s gold medal, given its many overlays of symbolism, but it was a wonderful night by any definition.

Freeman first. Competitively, her win was very good, if not quite outstanding. Her greatest rival, Marie-Jose Perec of France, the defending champion from Atlanta 1996, was not there. Perec had arrived in Sydney in equivocal form and mysteriously fled the Olympic city well before the Games opened.

Ultimately, Freeman’s winning 49.11 seconds was almost a full half-second slower than she had run chasing Perec home four years earlier.

What made Cathy Freeman’s gold medal all the more wondrous was what lay behind it. She was the face of the Games, lighting the cauldron at the Opening Ceremony as the anchor of a relay celebrating Australia’s great female athletes. No less an Olympic hero than Herb Elliott brought to the torch to the stadium to be followed by Betty Cuthbert and Raelene Boyle, Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland, Shane Gould, Debbie Flintoff-King _ and Cathy.

Then there was Freeman’s own background which, inevitably, saw her depicted as a role model for the indigenous community. Reconciliation between white and indigenous Australia was a hot issue in 2000.

And, no matter how much some of us argued otherwise, Freeman was constantly spoken off as Australia’s only medal hope in track and field. On top of that, 2000 brought the culmination of her personal and business split with her former partner.

So it was stress piled upon stress. At times, the two reinforced each other. When there was a dispute between SOCOG, the Games organising committee, and the IOC over the track and field timetable, the New South Wales Olympics minister, Michael Knight, claimed he had protected the Australian public’s right to come along on 25 September to see Cathy win her gold medal. No need for Perec to pile on the pressure then!

Nor, of course, did the ceremony pass without hitch. Freeman, who had just recovered from a cold, was drenched with water and, for a few terrifying moments, the hydraulic lift failed to function.

Freeman has often been asked about this. To my mind, she gave her best response a year ago when Ray Martin interviewed her at a function for her Catherine Freeman Foundation. Martin grilled her gently, but persistently, about her reaction to the stuff-up. You must have felt the pressure of this going wrong in front of 110,000 spectators and a huge international television audience, he insisted.

No, said Freman. “I told myself: I’ve come here to win a gold medal in the 400 metres, not to light the Olympic cauldron.”

SOCOG’s win on the timetable _ aimed at preserving “Cathy’s night” for people who had already bought tickets for day four of the athletics _ also indirectly led to Super Monday.

The IAAF had moved from an ‘8-day plus rest day’ to a 9-day timetable as early as the 1995 Gothenburg world championships. In the normal course of events, these changes were adopted at the Olympic Games at the end of the next cycle _ i.e. Sydney 2000.

SOCOG insisted they would not and, ultimately, prevailed. The 8-day timetable led to a natural build-up of finals on the even days, with the greatest number on day four and the final day.

So, Monday, 25 September boasted nine gold medal events. Each was an absolute cracker.

Michael Johnson cruised a 43.84 seconds 400, scarcely noticed in the immediate aftermath of Freeman’s run. Maria Mutola finally won her Olympic 800 gold, but only after an epic battle with Stephanie Graf and Kelly Holmes.

Paul Tergat stunned Haile Gebrselassie tactically by sitting until the last 200 metres of the 10,000 before unleashing his own finishing kick. Ultimately, Gebrselassie prevailed by inches in a race he regards as his finest ever. The winning margin was less than in the men’s 100 metres.

Gabriela Szabo just got the edge over Sonia O’Suillivan in an equally-absorbing women’s 5000 metres.

Then there was the women’s pole vault, Stacy Dragila winning in a world record from Tatiana Grigorieva, the discus with Virgilijus Alekna throwing almost 70 metres to win gold and Anier Garcia defeating the likes of Terrence Trammell, Allen Johnson and Colin Jackson in the men’s 110 metres hurdles final.

To finish the night, the three semi-finals of the men’s 800 metres were won by eventual gold medallist Nils Schumann (1:44.22), Djabir Said-Guerni (1:44.19) and Wilson Kipketer (1:44.22). The slowest man into the final was Hezekiel Sepeng, at 1:44.85. The Baci chocolates on the pillow at the end of a perfect night, I called them back then.

Back then, too, I mourned the loss of the old schedule. Now, it is impossible to get nights like 25 September, 2000, as the finals are more evenly distributed across the nine days. Fewer events per session means less chance of a sequence of highlights. Still, it works well enough when Usain Bolt runs 19.30 for 200 metres to break Micahel Johnson’s world record, or 9.58 for 100 as he did in Berlin last year. Or when Steve Hooker defies injury to claim a gold medal in the pole vault.

In any case, you can never add back the one essential ingredient that was present in Sydney 2000. It happened here, and an Australian champion provided the absolute highlight.

Those of us who were there were privileged to watch it. Most probably, it won’t happen again in our lifetimes.