Runners Cathy Freeman and Marion Jones, two of the stars from the Sydney 2000 Olympics, could not have had more different outcomes to their experiences at these Games.
Cathy Freeman: Glorious Victory
The story of Cathy Freeman at Sydney 2000 could not have been written any better. Hometown favorite, chosen to light the cauldron at the Opening Ceremony. Aboriginal superstar who handily wins gold in the 400m, bringing glory to Australia.
However, Freeman was under incredible amounts of pressure leading up to the Games. She was not only Australia’s big hope, she was also the hope of all Aboriginal people, who had undergone horrendous treatment when white people came to Australia and still suffered at the hands of extensive racism. To win a gold medal would bring pride to her country. It would also shine a light on Aborigines and how poorly they had been treated throughout Australia’s history.
On Magic Monday, Cathy Freeman created a memory that lives on in the hearts of millions. In a packed stadium, she took her place in the starting blocks. As she streaked around the track, the stadium vibrated from the crowd’s cheering–and it somehow got louder when she crossed the finish line for the gold.
Her 400m victory is one of the absolute highlights of the Sydney 2000 Games.
Marion Jones: The Choice to Disgrace the Games
Then there was Marion Jones. Coming into Sydney, Jones was one of track’s biggest superstars. At the Games, she had an ambitious schedule, and she stepped on the podium five times during the Games, the first time any woman had ever won five medals in track at an Olympics.
She won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x400m relay, and bronzes in long jump and the 4x100m relay, often with absolutely commanding performances. Here’s a sample of her races:
Her victories propelled her to stardom. She was the first athlete to grace the cover of Vogue. She got numerous endorsements and built a small fortune from her victories in Sydney.
Sadly, that fortune was built on lies. Years later, in 2007, we’d learn that Marion Jones had been doping (allegedly unbeknownst to her), with a regimen provided by BALCO Labs. She’d been using a new type of performance enhancing drugs that were undetectable in tests–and because out-of-competition testing was not much of a thing, it was easier to dope months ahead of the Games and still feel the positive effects months later.
The FBI investigated BALCO, and as part of that investigation, brought Marion into their offices to testify under oath. She opted to not tell the truth in both this case and another involving check fraud. Subsequently, she pleaded guilty and served a prison sentence.
The International Olympic Committee also stripped her of her medals and Athens 2004 diploma and barred her from Beijing 2008. She retired from the sport, disgraced.
Listen to the podcast for more incredible details about these two women and their journeys to Sydney, and what happened to them after the Games.
Click here for a full source list.
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
378-Sydney 2000: Glory and Disgrace on the Track
Jill Jaracz: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another history episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love games, we are the show for you. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you?
Alison Brown: I have been spending so much time on YouTube.
And it makes me want my bangs back.
Jill Jaracz: Those were different days, right?
Alison Brown: You know, you think of the 80s as big hair, but man, what were we doing in 2000?
Jill Jaracz: And then it all went flat. Right? It all went flat.
Alison Brown: And the skinny eyebrows.
Those were the days, man. Those were the days.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, man. Yes. This is our monthly history episode in which we look back at one particular games all throughout 2025. That games will [00:01:00] be Sydney 2000 as it’s the 25th anniversary of those games. And we are drowning in
information.
Alison Brown: I was working on this month and next month because next month is me and it’s basically the story I’ve been wanting to do since we started the podcast.
Awesome.
So I have been just, like I said, living on YouTube of all these videos and it’s nice because there is a lot. of a video to watch. So we’ll have links to things and that’ll be, that’s fun because you can relive your skinny eyebrow days as well. Right,
Jill Jaracz: right, right. So this month we are looking at two big stories from athletics, Marion Jones and Cathy Freeman.
I have the not so fun one.
Alison Brown: It’s kind of the, the, the yin and yang of the whole Olympics is right in this month’s episode.
Jill Jaracz: And, you know, the sad thing is I remember Cathy Freeman and I get all excited and then you’re like, Oh, yeah, Marion Jones was in this one too.
Marion Jones: Disgrace on the Track
Jill Jaracz: So, Marion Jones, Marion Jones, [00:02:00] Marion Jones, Sydney’s sprinting golden girl, won five medals at Sydney. Gold in the 100 meter, gold in the 200 meter, gold in the four by 400 meter relay, bronze in the long jump, bronze in the four by 100 meter relay.
The first time any woman had ever won five medals in track at the Olympics.
Alison Brown: I’m already upset because I know what’s happening.
Jill Jaracz: Seven years later, we’d learn those medals were tarnished, and in the record subsidy, we will have a race with no gold medalist. So what happened? Buckle up and pay attention, listeners. There is a lot of drama, and there are a lot of characters. and Marion story. So Marion was a really talented athlete growing up.
She was a high school star who was a double threat in track and basketball. She qualified for the U. S. Olympic trials in 1992 when she was still in high school, but placed fourth in the 200 meters and did not make the [00:03:00] team by just. A few hundreds of a second. So it was very, very close that she did not make the team.
She was offered an alternate slot on a relay team, but she turned it down saying, quote, When people come to see my gold medals, I want to be able to say I ran for them, end quote. Dark cloud started forming over Jones as early as 1993 when she was suspended by USA track and field for failing to take a drug test.
She apparently did not know about said drug test because of a mail mix up. So she fought the decision in court and her lawyer, a pre OJ Simpson. Johnnie Cochran helped her get the decision overturned.
Alison Brown: I have no pithy statement like Johnnie Cochran would have, because remember, it’s rhymes.
Yes, right. If the club does not fit, you must acquit.
Jill Jaracz: So, if you think, like, well, she’s track’s next great star, why was she not? Anywhere, when it came to [00:04:00] Atlanta 1996, well, by then she was playing basketball and also running track at the University of North Carolina. And with the basketball team, she helped them get to a national championship in 1994.
So basketball was really kind of her focus. And unfortunately she got injured on the basketball court at the world university games that caused her to miss Atlanta 1996. She decided the next year she’d give up basketball to pursue her Olympic dream and won gold in the 100 meter world champs that year, setting herself up as track’s next star.
But before she became an international track sensation, she met shot putter CJ Hunter. They met in the weight room at North Carolina in 1995. He was a throws coach who was seven years older than she was. He’d just gotten a separation from his wife and two kids. He gave Jones a ride to the airport just before Thanksgiving and they [00:05:00] clicked.
Alison Brown: Okay, two things. Never trust anyone you meet in the weight room. And two, you know somebody’s going to give you a ride to the airport. They’re looking for something.
Jill Jaracz: so North Carolina’s policy was that coaches and students could not date. So he quit his coaching job and, he did go to Atlanta 1996. He placed 7th in the shot put. And then He got Jamaican Olympian Trevor Graham to coach Marion in 1997, and that set the whole ball in motion.
1998, Marion and CJ get married. We know now that Marion started taking drugs ahead of Sydney. She has said, and this is in her memoir, Uh, she did not know she was taking drugs, that her coach told her it was flaxseed oil, that she should take a couple of drops of this clear liquid, hold it under her tongue, and then swallow.
So, we’d find out later that that flaxseed oil was really the [00:06:00] clear. which was a new steroid that wasn’t being tested and couldn’t be detected. And Coach Graham had approached Balco Labs in the Bay Area about it. Balco Labs might be familiar to those of you who follow baseball because a lot of baseball players also used Balco Labs, including Barry Bjorns, Jason Giambi.
Lots of folks. So head of Balco, Victor Conti developed a big regimen. So you take the clear on Monday, Wednesday, and then on Tuesday and Thursday, you would apply the cream, the cream, this creamy substance on your skin. And that was a masking agent. And then on the weekend, you take nothing. And it kind of, Get out of your body a little bit, but the effects still stayed and then, uh, you’d repeat and they had calendars with names written on them just for Marion.
It was either Marion or MJ. Conti also said that Jones was taking human growth hormone injections as well. And that’s the kind of stuff like. When you think back to what testing [00:07:00] was back then, there wasn’t a whole lot of out of competition testing. So it was really, he’s like this, it was like taking candy from a baby I was watching a video of him with business insider and he’s like, Oh, the loopholes were so big.
You could just take, human growth hormone in like December for a little while. get off of it by the time you’re getting tested in competition later that year, it won’t show up and you’ll still feel the effects, the positive effects of the drugs. you know, you feel stronger, you can go faster, you can go longer, you recover quicker.
It’s all of this stuff. So, you know, flaxseed oil. Good times. And I, and I also read that flaxseed oil was not uncommon to take because it’s like, uh, taking fish oil. And if you didn’t like fish oil, you could take flaxseed oil and get the same benefits. But this was not what that was. and Marion said in her memoir that she just kind of trusted her coach implicitly.
And it was one of those here, take this. [00:08:00] Okay, I’ll take it kind of situations. I don’t know how. Much. I want to believe Marion’s memoir, to be quite honest. she, she does have some remorse for some of the stuff that she’s done, but there’s also an element of her being controlled in a way. And maybe, maybe that’s true, and maybe times are different where more people will stand up for themselves nowadays, but I don’t know.
so now we get to Sydney. And Sydney is not all fun and games. There is a huge cloud of suspicion really starting to form over her and her husband, CJ. CJ withdrew from the games just before they started citing injury, but reports were that he’d failed the drug test in July of that year and the Sydney Daily Telegraph broke that story.
And Dick Pound, who is board chairman of WADA confirmed it in a way that was clearly meant to embarrass USA Track and Field. So Pound told Sports Illustrated, [00:09:00] quote, this is a case that took place in July. We’re hearing about it in September. And all we learned from the United States was that Hunter wasn’t competing.
Come on, we’ve all got to work together to solve this doping problem, and the United States should lead the way rather than being led kicking and screaming into being part of the solution. End quote.
Alison Brown: Dick Pound goes rogue!
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, he, he did. And, he was really angry about it because the USATF had a policy of not releasing names for tests and suspensions until all the appeals had been exhausted.
So that could eat up most of somebody’s suspension time and you’d find it out and then like their suspension would end the next month. So they wouldn’t confirm Hunter’s name because he hadn’t waived his right to confidentiality. That made the, the IOC angry. And in fact, At Sydney, IOC members were so angry with the USATF’s drug testing program that they talked about sending the entire U. S. Olympic track and field team [00:10:00] home. It’s not pretty.
Alison Brown: I think it’s important that you mention that because all the trouble that we’re seeing now between the United States Olympic and Paralympic committee and WADA and other testing. It’s a long history of conflict. This is nothing new.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, yes.
To, to come
Alison Brown: up. So important to, to remember that.
Jill Jaracz: Very much so. Um, so Marion and CJ were staying in an apartment in Bankstown, which was a western suburb of Sydney, I believe that was kind of closer to where the stadium. Was and, she didn’t go to processing. Apparently somebody from USATF brought her kit over to her.
And then CJ goes, well, where’s my kit? And they said, Oh, you quit the team. You don’t get kit. And he got angry, Marion got angry, and she decided that she was not going to attend any USOC functions in Sydney. And that’s a big deal when you got your track star. Who said, and it’s not, you know, just you see the conflict that’s arising between all [00:11:00] these things and, in a way it’s impressive what Marion was able to do with all this controversy swirling around her.
her race has made history. She won the 100 meter in 10. 75 seconds, 0. 37 seconds ahead of Silver. It was a huge, such a huge margin. It was the largest margin of victory since 1952. In comparison, so she had 10. 75 seconds. Julian Alfred’s winning time in Paris was 10. 72.
Alison Brown: Wow.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, right?
Alison Brown: Wow.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, and you think about all of the advances in track technology and shoe technology.
What could it have been? You know, the weather wasn’t great in Paris, so that may have been a factor too, but Jones would have gotten the bronze in Paris had she had that time. Her post race test was negative. Winning continued her 200 meter time was another big [00:12:00] victory in the four by 400 meter relay.
Jones ran the third leg and she pulled away from Jamaica to put the US ahead for the anchor lap and they won handily in the long jump, she’d never won long jump before, even in, World Athletics or, or it was the IAAF at the time. and there means she’d never won. long jump, she got bronze at the Olympics, and in the 4 by 100 meter relay, there were some botched handoffs on the team, and that meant they settled for the bronze.
Her winning paid off financially, big time. She was the first athlete to be on the cover of Vogue magazine. She scored multi million dollar endorsement deals. She made 70, 000 to 80, 000 per race that she ran. Yes. Right. And that’s no chump change now, nevermind 25 years ago. Right. So really one of the first big female moneymakers in the sport.
And then things really started to go south. 2001 world [00:13:00] champs. She lost her first 100 meter race in six years. She still won the 200 meter and the 400 by four by 100. CJ retired, their marriage fell apart and they divorced in 2002. In 2003, Marion had a baby with her boyfriend, Tim Montgomery, who was also a Balco boy.
during this time, Coach Graham anonymously mailed a syringe to USADA saying it’s the clear and Marion used it. CJ Hunter also told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had been giving Marion illegal injections and had seen her inject herself with illegal performance enhancing drugs.
So, the FBI brought her in for questioning as part of its investigation into Balco, and although she had immunity, she was still under oath. Important. When the FBI pulled out the vial of the clear, she denied knowing what it was. Lied about that. [00:14:00] competing. Next year, Athens 2004. She Only qualified for the long jump on the team, no running, but she had also, like, she just had a baby too.
So she came back, qualified for the long jump, finished 5th at Athens, got a diploma. the drug story continues to unravel. As Valco founder, Victor Conte, told ABC that he gave Jones drugs before, during, and after Sydney. She sued him for defamation. They settled out of court. Then, boyfriend Tim Montgomery tests positive.
He’s banned for two years. He retired. Then in 2006, Marion tests positive. But they test her B sample, negative, and she’s off the hook. In 2007, Marion tried to start over. She’d broken up with Montgomery. Early in 2007, she married Barbadian Olympian Obadele Thompson, who was Barbados first, and still only, Olympic medalist.
but [00:15:00] time caught up with Marion. She got charged with lying to federal investigators about the drugs as well as lying about a check fraud scheme that her ex boyfriend was involved in. She wasn’t charged for using drugs. She was charged for lying about them.
Alison Brown: It’s never the crime. It’s always the cover up.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So in October of 2007, she decided to plead guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison. 800 hours of community service and probation, and that was the long end of the sentencing guidelines. They really made an example with her. That December, the IOC invest opened an investigation, and we’re getting near the end of the time frame that the IOC has to go back and and test and investigate drug cases, although that’s since changed.
Thank you, Russia. Investigation by the IOC, led by Vice President Thomas Bach. Really? Yes, yes. T. Bach led the [00:16:00] investigation into, into Marion Jones. He’s everywhere we want to be.
Alison Brown: He really, I mean, he had his fingers in so many pies in the IOC. It is. Amazing. It took him as long as it did to become president in a way.
Jill Jaracz: so T box investigation, that team, officially stripped her of her medals and diploma and banned her from Beijing. That being said, once she pled guilty, she returned her medals, but she did have to return the diploma separately.
She said, I’m done with athletics. That’s it. With that case, she became the fourth American in Olympic history to have a medal stripped from her by the IOC. She was third from doping. There was, Jerome Young was also found, doping in Sydney, Rick DeMont in Munich, our friend, John McLeod did the, documentary on him.
And then Jim Thorpe was the other one, but his medals have been since [00:17:00] reinstated. Jones’s doping also meant that the official results changed and that affected more than three dozen other athletes.
Alison Brown: But,
Jill Jaracz: yeah, when you think about like, oh, you won all these medals.
Alison Brown: She was in so many events.
Jill Jaracz: Mm hmm. So many events. So all the
Alison Brown: medalists move up, all the fourth place get on the podium, all those things shift around.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, well, they can move up. We’ll, we’ll find that out in a minute. So in the 4×100 meter, the relay team appealed to Cass.
And Cass ruled that they were allowed to keep their medals and 3rd place finish, just Marion had to give up her medal. So the rest of them got to stay and they got to keep their standing as well. In the 100 meter, silver medalist Ekaterina Tannou from Greece. Was, not moved up to gold because if you remember ahead of Athens 2004, she and Greek sprinter Costas Konteras faked a motorcycle accident to avoid a drug test.
Do you [00:18:00] remember this story? I don’t. Oh, I vaguely remember when I, it was a big, big deal. Like they faked this whole accident because they didn’t want to get tested. So, the IOC said, we are not upgrading you because of course now we are post Athens. So they have seen this behavior play out and they’re like, no, we’re not going to take your medal away cause we can’t.
She had tested negative in Sydney, but, uh, we’re not going to upgrade you. So they upgraded bronze medalist, Tanya Lawrence from Jamaica to silver. So there’s dual silvers. In the hundred meter now, and then Merlene Addy from Jamaica moved up to bronze. So now we have this race with no gold medalist in the books.
Jones did serve six months in federal prison, a portion of which she spent in solitary confinement. She had a couple of children and the new husband when she went to prison, they divorced in 2017. Jones also played in the WNBA for one and a half seasons. She played with Tulsa and last year she came [00:19:00] out on Instagram.
And today she does some life coaching and public speaking. Most recently she was on the TV show special forces world’s toughest test, which our Shukla Stani Erin Jackson was on last year. She unfortunately, we did watch and they did not get too far into her story because she, there’s, there’s always A challenge where they have to box each other and she got her ribs banged up enough that she got metal medically discharged. So since then, she’s got a pretty low profile and pops out every now and again, but really she’s just Trying to move on with her life and be a good example and help others as well.
So that is the sad story of Marion Jones. Sources include Business Insider, CBS News, multiple articles from ESPN, Essence, her memoir, On the Right Track from Olympic Downfall to Finding Forgiveness and the Strength to Overcome and Succeed, the LA Times, NPR, and Multiple articles from the New [00:20:00] York Times, Reuters, multiple articles from Sports Illustrated, Tampa Bay Times, Us Weekly, and I will put a full list of those on our website, so be sure to check that out.
Cathy Freeman: Glory on the Track
Jill Jaracz: Please tell me you have a happier story.
Alison Brown: I have a much happier story. Oh, yay. this will, Make you sad, but cheer you up in the end. So, when we did the opening ceremony, we talked a lot, obviously, about Cathy Freeman being the lighter of the cauldron. And at the time I said, hold on, keep her name in your head, we’re gonna tell her story.
So now I get to tell her story, and I’m so excited because I loved her then, and reading about her in more depth made me love her more. So Cathy Freeman is Aborigine, the native people of Australia. Specifically, she is from the Kuku Yalanji tribe. I apologize if I’m not pronouncing that right. I couldn’t find a place that told me how to pronounce it.
as in the United States and Canada, Australia has a dark history with the treatment of its Native people. And, you know, colonists came, stole the land, enslaved the [00:21:00] people, broke the treaties. All this stuff, if you’re in the United States and Canada, you know this story and it happened in Australia. And Aboriginal people suffered from discrimination and poverty.
Right up to today, but especially in the 20th century, like there was in the United States. And we talked about this with Jim Thornton, a removal of native children from their families to institutions. And this happened to Cathy’s grandmother and the effects of that were felt throughout, the generations of the family.
So when Cathy was born, her family lived in subsidized government housing. And she had to move frequently as a child, especially after her parents divorced and her younger sister died. But as a teenager, Cathy won a scholarship to the College. And college is high school in Australia. But as well as she was doing, she really felt out of place with the predominantly white students.
And let’s just say they weren’t very nice to her. They shamed her for her [00:22:00] appearance. She looks. Very aboriginal when you see her face, and they used a lot of words that I can’t use on the radio. Let’s just put it that way. So from an early age, though, Cathy loved to run. And in a meeting with a school counselor as a young teenager, she said her only professional goal was to win an Olympic medal.
And at 17, Cathy won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games as a member of the Australian four by 100 meter relay team. And she was the first Aboriginal athlete to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games, which sort of tells you. How discriminated against that they were in that Aboriginal athletes didn’t even make it to the Australian team and two years later She qualified for the Olympics and in Barcelona She be also became the first Aboriginal athlete to compete at the Olympics, which again surprised me It’s 92 you would have thought at some point Australia would have had No No,
and she didn’t meddle in [00:23:00] 92, but her profile grew and many in Australia began to see her as a poster child for Aboriginal freedom. And, and that was a lot of pressure on this kid.
It became really a blessing and a curse. She was proud of her heritage and she appreciated showing other Aborigines that they shouldn’t be ashamed of themselves or how they looked or, or how they grew up. But she struggled with the, and this is a quote, the weight of the Aboriginal role model thing. And she began to resent the, and again, a quote, the inevitable stream of questions about the plight of the Aboriginal people.
So she was proud of it, but she was tired of answering questions about it. She wanted to talk about her running. And man, could this kid run. at the 96 Olympics in Atlanta, she won silver in the 400 meter. Again, the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic medal. She won the world championships [00:24:00] in the 400 in 1997, losing only one race that entire season.
She was injured in 98, but she returned in 99 and reclaimed her world title. And in that season leading up to the Olympics, nobody beat Cathy Freeman at the 400 meter distance. Australia has been in the Olympics forever. You know, 1896, they sent a team and they’ve got a long history of success in athletics.
Edwin Flack won golds in the 800 and the 1500 in 1896. But in the Olympiads of the 70s and 80s, Not so much. Medals had been far and few between in running. Debbie Flintoff King won gold in the 400 meter hurdles in 1988, and Australia had not won a running gold since then, when you get to 2000. And this blew me away.
The last time Australia had won a flat race, meaning not hurdles, was [00:25:00] from Betty Cuthbert in 1964. Whoa. So between 64 and 2000, not men, not women, nobody was winning on the track for Australia. So you come to a home Olympics. So the pressure on Cathy Freeman was tremendous. She carried the hopes of a sports crazed nation into their home games.
And she felt this incredible pressure being a role model. for the Aboriginal people. Being chosen as the final torchbearer only heightened Cathy’s profile and overnight she became the most famous woman in Australia. And as we talked about in the opening ceremony, piece, the torch relay ended with a series of Australian legends, all women who had won gold medals.
And then they handed to Cathy who hadn’t yet won a gold medal. So the pressure just. So ramped up. She was all anybody was talking about. She was also very distinctive on the [00:26:00] track at the time because she wore the Nike Swift suit, which covered her from head to heel. So it had a hood. It had hands. She was this, this.
Bullet of a girl on the track and We get to her races finally. She cruised through the three preliminary heats and a day that became known as Magic Monday, we did a whole episode on Magic Monday, Cathy lined up for her final. A hundred and twelve thousand people filled the stands and millions more watched on TV.
I had read a statistic, but I could not confirm this. that it was the most watched female Australian sports event in the history of Australian television.
Insane. Insane. And even when you watch the old recordings, you know, on YouTube of the television coverage, you can tell that the crowd noise during this race is deafening. She was steady. She was [00:27:00] measured in Adelaide six. She just calmly moved up with each turn. She took the lead with about 80 meters to go and one by decisive half second.
This was not a close race and she never panicked. She never looked like she was Speeding up, it was just step by step. And at the end of the race, she looks more stunned and relieved than excited. So I love this quote that she talks about, what it felt like for the race. So she says, I wanted to be an Olympic champion, and I didn’t care about the goings on around me.
In my heart and with all my soul, I was ready, willing, and I was very able. I had a deadly sense of self belief. I’d go to another level and say I had a deadly sense of self conviction, where you can say whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. But you’re not going to touch [00:28:00] me. And at the end of the race, that’s how it looked like, where she just sort of stood for a minute and kneels down on the track.
And until the other racers come around, the other runners come around and start talking to her and hugging her. She almost doesn’t react, but by the time she gets To the victory lap, we have a huge moment. She carried both the Australian and the Aboriginal flag and she tied them together so that one was not higher than the other.
And it was a huge political statement that she was making on the track. And she had been criticized for carrying the Aboriginal flag in the past, but she was trying to say, I am Australian and I am Aboriginal and I am a champion. If you don’t cry when you watch this, you are tougher than I am. And once again, she is the first Aboriginal Australian to win an individual gold medal.[00:29:00]
Another woman won, uh, field hockey. And she’s still the only individual gold medalist of Aboriginal descent. Again, you were talking about the discrimination, that’s how much Cathy Freeman meant to Australia and especially the Aboriginal people. After the Olympics, Cathy was awarded the Laureus Female Athlete of the Year, the Medal of the Order of Australia.
She was inducted as a legend to the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. The grandstand of the stadium where the race took place, which is now called Acor Stadium, was renamed the Cathy Freeman Stand in her honor. I love that. And One of the reasons I wanted to do this story is when they were talking about the 20th anniversary, we were reading a lot of articles and Cathy Freeman has kept a relatively low profile afterwards.
She started the Cathy Freeman Foundation, which supports education [00:30:00] for Aboriginal children. She kind of pops up here and there. She’s still obviously extremely beloved in Australia, but she did an interview. Celebrating the 20th anniversary, and she offhandedly revealed that she refers to one of our IOC favorites, John Coates.
As we have continued to use. So, Cathy Freeman, thank you for Coetzee.
So, sources, Olympedia, National Museum of Australia, Indigenous Australia, J Rank, Britannica, olympics. com, World Athletics, Sport Australian Hall of Fame, and Inside the Games. Excellent. And lots of YouTube videos.
Jill Jaracz: do have a follow up from, our first Sydney episode. And that is that, the Australian Olympic Committee a few weeks ago, gave Australia Day honors [00:31:00] to
several contributors to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Paul Begaude, who wrote Dare to Dream, the song that was sung by Olivia Newton John and John Farnham in the opening ceremony, which you discussed on our last episode.
Alison Brown: Also worth a trip to YouTube.
Jill Jaracz: So congratulations to them, that’s really it’s very nice that he got recognition for his work and his contributions to making Sydney 2000 so special.
And that is going to do it for this episode. Let us know your favorite moments from Sydney 2000.
Alison Brown: And we love hearing from you. You can chat with us and other listeners on our Facebook group, Keep the Flame Alive Podcast. Email us at flamealivepod at gmail. com. The voicemail and text line is always open at 208 352 6348. That’s 208 flame it. And if you need more Olympics and [00:32:00] Paralympics in your life, and who doesn’t sign up for our newsletter at flamealivepod.com, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes.
Jill Jaracz: And next week we will be heading back to the more recent past when we catch up with para powerlifter Bobby Boddy and his take on the Paris 2024 Paralympics and also what is in store for him and the sport.
It was a great conversation. We had a great time talking with him, so you will not want to miss this conversation. Thank you so much for listening and until next time, keep the flame alive.