Freeman Victory Seen As Politically Symbolic
September 26, 2000
Cathy Freeman's gold-medal victory in the 400 metre track event last night has been met with the usual over-statement of the commercial media. However, there is general agreement that the win does nothing to harm the reconciliation process.
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley went as far as saying: "For me, that was 400 metres of national reconciliation. All the burdens of the world on the shoulders of that girl - the hopes of her community, her own hopes, the anticipation of the nation. All that, and she ran so well. I think I can genuinely say 400 metres of national reconciliation."
The international media has also commented on Freeman. The Washington Post's sports columnist, Michael Wilbon, has this to say in today's edition:
"She didn't show up Hitler. There was no black-gloved salute. She simply ran a race, 400 metres long. And as dramatic as it
sounds, she changed a chunk of the world, or at the very least she has set the course. For Australia, a nation that only recently
even acknowledged two centuries of uncivil treatment toward its indigenous people, to suddenly have a clear national hero
who is black, is a stunning departure from history and was virtually unimaginable before these Olympic Games began.
"It was so much to take in, Freeman didn't even try to deal with it all at once. She couldn't. In less than 50 seconds she had
become an Olympic champion, given Aboriginal people unprecedented public triumph, endeared herself to mainstream
Australia and catalyzed the process to reconcile the two. The pressure in recent days, even after she had lit the Olympic
cauldron to open these Games, had become so overwhelming she had taken to rubbing her temples, even in public. 'I have to
admit the attention is overwhelming,' she had said. 'I also understand it's part of this life.'
"So at the end of the race, which she did not lead for the first 300 meters, she simply sat down just beyond the finish line. For
70 seconds she just sat there. No hugs, no kisses, no waving to the masses whose photographic flashbulbs lit the stadium like
bolts of lightning. She just sat, and said to herself, "I've weathered the pressure."
Wilbon laments the tendency of Americans to focus solely on their own athletes (an allegation levelled here at the jingoistic coverage by the Seven Network. Wilbon says:
"In America, during the Olympics especially, we are so
absorbed with following American athletes, we simply ignore the rest of the globe and many fascinating athletes and their
stories from Africa to Iceland. So most Americans don't know that Freeman, in addition to being one of the world's great
athletes, is a woman of deep thought and great intelligence whose everyday speech is almost lyrical. When she speaks, I find
myself lost in the elegance and clarity of her expression. At one point after the race, when asked to put some of this in
perspective, Freeman said, 'Sport isn't everything. . . . Sport is this great arena for drama and it's a reflection of life. And
anything can happen; even the favorite [sometimes] doesn't win.'
"... It's a halting thing in any walk of life when people are confronted with surreal expectations and meet them. But of course,
Freeman doesn't see it that way. People who can move the culture rarely do. 'In my simple world, when I wake up, have
breakfast and clean my teeth, life is very normal,' she said. Problem is, she hasn't been able to inhabit that world in some
time, starting to some degree in 1994 when she first carried the Aboriginal and Australian flags after winning a race, then
increasingly since. There's not an athlete in these Games, not Marion Jones, not Ian Thorpe, not Michael Johnson, not
Maurice Greene, who has carried the burden of Cathy Freeman. Does anybody in America train or perform with these issues
anymore? She has never been reviled, like Muhammad Ali, and is not consciously political. But like Jackie Robinson, she is
first and pioneering has worn out a lot of strong people. And as improbable as that analogy may sound, remember
that Australia had a whites-only immigration policy until the late 1960s, routinely separated Aboriginal children from the
parents until the early 1970s, and didn't see fit to give indigenous people the right to vote until the late 1960s."
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