For a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was impossible to walk down a main street in Australia’s capital cities and not get swept up in a ticker-tape parade. There was a swagger, and an inevitability, about our cricketers, tennis players, rugby teams and particularly our Olympians. John Howard, impervious to time zones and decked out in an interchanging array of team tracksuits, was a prime minister for this sporting epoch.
The pressure on our leg spinners, baseliners, butterflyers and full forwards could be multiplied tenfold when it came to Kuku Yalanji and Birri Gubba woman Catherine Freeman. She’d been on the national sporting radar for a decade. She’d run the great Marie-José Pérec to a few yards at the Atlanta Games. She’d been pretty much unbeatable for four years.
