Martin Gillingham
athletics
When Cathy Freeman arrived in Monte Carlo last week to collect the most prestigious sporting award of the year she was … how can we put this delicately? … OK, why bother. Last year’s world sportswoman of the year has gone to fat.
Fat, that is, in the eye of your average world-class sprinter who probably spends just as much time stepping on and off her bathroom scale as she does jumping in and out of her starting blocks. But even in a sport where the demands of improving an athlete’s power-to-weight ratio have prompted serious debate over just how many anorexics are being created by coaches’ unforgiving training and dietary programmes, there has been considerable concern for Freeman’s curvaceous new look.
In truth, the Olympic 400m champion now looks more like your average young suburban housewife. To be precise, she looks more like your average suburban housewife who’s already into the third or fourth month of pregnancy.
No one in the Freeman camp has hinted such an announcement may be imminent but, let it be said, the word last week at a Sydney bar frequented by the Australian sporting media is that the only competitor to have lit the Olympic cauldron and then gone on to win gold at the same games is in the family way.
Therefore, you’ll understand that the concern being shown over Freeman’s appearance is not so much for her well-being as it is for the now real possibility that she might never compete again. Eight months ago, Australia was bathing in the afterglow of a superbly run Olympics. But off the back of Freeman’s appearance in Monte Carlo Australians seem more subdued. Indeed, last Friday, a Sydney radio talk show host actually posed the question: “Having seen what Cathy now looks like, where will our next sporting hero come from?”
That is a staggering over-reaction. But it is an indication of just how badly Australia has taken to Freeman’s new look. “It’s been amazing,” says her Olympic village room-mate Tamsyn Lewis. “Every second person I know has been talking about her appearance at the Laureus sports awards instead of her achievement.
“When athletes have come up to me to talk about Catherine’s appearance I felt like saying to them, ‘Don’t you know it will happen to us all when we stop training?'”
Freeman says she’ll start training again in October with a view to competing at next year’s Commonwealth Games in Manchester. But it seems the shy girl from Queensland may opt instead for the quieter role of housewife and perhaps mother alongside her American husband in Portland, Oregon.
Lewis adds: “Cathy’s not fat. Put her in a room full of people and she wouldn’t be bigger than the average person. She looks healthy and that’s all. If people knew how hard she trained and how closely she watched her weight in the lead-up to the games, they’d be happy that she can relax now. I spent a lot of time with her during the games and the pressure she was under was intense. But her focus was amazing. I’ve never seen anyone so ripped physically or so focused.”
Lewis’s insight adds ammunition to those who believe Freeman’s 49-second dash to Olympic glory in September will prove to be her final competitive outing. Though some have criticised it, Freeman’s Laureus award was fully deserved. Her victory in Sydney was the crowning glory of the games.
It’s not that Freeman’s performance was breathtaking in purely athletics terms her winning time was almost two seconds slower than the world record nor was the achievement so great because of the significance of a victory by an Aboriginal woman on home soil.
It’s rather more simple than that. I would suggest no figure has ever gone into any sporting competition under such intolerable pressure. If a script was written for a successful Sydney games then its climax was to be reached on the second Monday with Cathy Freeman winning the women’s 400m title.
Without it the Aussie dream of a great games would not have been fulfilled. Freeman knew it. And, thankfully, she delivered. However, the price that’s been paid for it is this: a shy woman, who craves neither the money nor profile that such an achievement brings, has been burnt out.