Born to Run by Cathy Freeman

Author:Cathy Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742282497
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2009-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8 First Olympics

By the time I was eighteen, I’d finished school and moved from sunny Queensland down to Melbourne in Victoria. Although I’d won a Commonwealth Games gold medal, I was still dreaming about the Olympics. But I didn’t just want to compete in relays any more – I wanted to run in my own event.

My coach in Melbourne was a middle-aged man with thin, silvery hair called Peter Fortune. Fort was pretty calm and relaxed, which suited me. He’d coached other Australian champions and thought my fluid running style was best suited to the 400m event. I had run a few 400m races over the years, but I’d never really focused on it. The first time I’d raced that distance was when I was twelve. I ate a Mars Bar just before the start and all the way round I could feel it. I collapsed when I crossed the finished line and almost threw up.

Together Fort and I started training for the Barcelona Olympic trials. The day I heard I’d been selected, I was over the moon! I’d qualified to run in both the individual 400m sprint and the 400m relay. I couldn’t help thinking back to the time when my old high school teacher Sess had told me I’d go to the Olympics one day.

The first thing I did when I got to Barcelona was call Mum. She’d been holidaying overseas for a few weeks and was staying with some friends in Israel.

‘Hey, Ma,’ I said. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m good, darling,’ she said. ‘My friends are taking really good care of me. Where are you?’

‘I’m in the Olympic village, Ma. It’s right by the ocean so it feels like a holiday resort. I start competing in a week or so. You’ll be here in time, won’t you?’

‘Of course, I will,’ Mum said. ‘I wouldn’t come this far only to miss my girl competing in her first Olympics!’

In the athletes’ village I shared a room with long-distance walker Kerry Saxby. Our apartment was on the third floor and we had a TV room, a kitchen, a bathroom and one bedroom. The bedroom window had a view of the street. Every morning I got woken up when a noisy garbage truck came to collect the rubbish.

Just before I’d left Australia, one of my friends had given me an Aboriginal flag as a present, and I hung this on the bedroom wall for everyone to see. It made me feel so proud with its beautiful colours of black, red and gold.

Even though we had our own kitchen, Kerry and I ate most of our meals in the huge dining room. If the dining room at the Commonwealth Games had seemed big, this one was like a small town. The whole Olympic village was incredible – there were movie theatres, beauty salons, and even a games parlour. I was lucky I didn’t get lost. Everywhere you went there was something or someone to look at – including athletes from every country in the world.

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