Athletics: Freeman to run the race of her life, for the life of her race

Alcoholic Charlie has trouble remembering the day, but as he sits around a smouldering fire in Sydney's Aborigine ghetto he knows black Australia has a date with destiny when Cathy Freeman runs the Olympic 400m final.

"I want to see Cathy run," says Charlie, who will give only his first name.

"She runs for all of us black fellas," he says, taking another swig from his bottle of beer.

While the Olympics has given Aborigine leaders a platform to tell the world of the dispossession of black Australia, it may be a skinny Aborigine from a small rural town who sends the biggest message.

Promised black protests have yet to materialise in any significant form on the eve of the Games, with many Aborigine leaders quarrelling over who should lead the campaign.

But despite these bitter divisions, Aborigines are united in their support of world 400m champion Freeman - a quietly spoken athlete who, until recently, has steadfastly avoided politics.

"A spindly Aboriginal girl from Queensland will represent us to the world," says Lyall Munro, the firebrand leader of the Sydney Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council.

"Cathy is the light at the end of the tunnel. Cathy Freeman represents all Aboriginal people. She runs for her people first and her country second," Munro says.

"If Cathy wears the Aboriginal flag at the Olympic Stadium it will be a message of pride for all Aborigines - a message that we are not a downtrodden people, that we are still here and will not be killed off."

Freeman sparked controversy when she ran a lap of honour at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada wearing the black and gold Aborigine flag draped over her shoulders.

At one stage she was warned that to do the same in Sydney could see her lose an Olympic medal. But officials have since softened their stance and IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch says it would be fitting for the Aborigine flag to fly at Stadium Australia.

Only last month Freeman again made a high-profile entry into Aborigine politics when she criticised the Government as mean-spirited for not apologising for past atrocities against black Australia.

Aborigines were massacred in their thousands after Australia was colonised by white settlers from 1788, evicted from their ancestral lands and derided until relatively recently by many white Australians as Stone Age relics.

Deprived of democratic rights such as citizenship and the vote until the 1960s, their life expectancy is 20 years shorter than that of other Australians.

Freeman's grandmother was one of the "stolen generation." From the 1920s to 1960s light-skinned Aboriginal children were removed from their families to live in the white community.

In the immediate lead-up to Sydney, the sprinter has been silent on Aborigine issues - cloistered away to prepare for the races of her life.

But she is not the sole Aborigine athlete. Unlike the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, when there were no Aborigine competitors, the Sydney Games will see a strong Aborigine contingency. Among those selected are runner Nova Peris-Kneebone and hurdler Kyle Vander-Kuyp - both regarded as medal prospects.

Munro compares their selection to the attitudes when Australia last hosted an Olympics.

' "This country only gave Aboriginal people the right to be classified as human beings in 1967, before that we were classified with flora and fauna. Today Aboriginal athletes are on top of the world and will carry our message."





But while there is pride in their sporting achievements, there is cynicism at street level of whether the Games will leave lasting benefits.



You have to look hard to find any mention of the Olympics at the Elouera boxing gym on Vine St in the Aboriginal enclave known as "the Block," a quadrant of mean streets in Sydney's Redfern district whose crumbling houses, crime and problems of drugs and substance abuse stand as a symbol of the woes of Australia's native peoples.

Photographs of Aboriginal boxing idol Tony Mundine plaster the walls of the community-project gym and a poster proclaims: "Owners of the land since time began." There is also a newspaper cutting with a story about how Freeman and other Aborigine athletes oppose a boycott of the Games by indigenous Australians.



Murray Bradbury, a 25-year-old Aborigine who recently swapped unemployment for a stab at a career as a professional boxer, says that someone such as Freeman generates a lot of pride.



That apart, Bradbury finds little to say about the Games.

And, says the gym's manager Alex Tui, the people of "the Block" and many other Aborigines he knows see little for themselves in the 17-day Olympics.

"Apart from Cathy Freeman, the Olympics for us, okay, it's a big event, there's excitement there, but it doesn't mean that much," said Tui, who has managed the gym for 11 years and lives in "the Block".

The Olympic spirit stops at Redfern railway station, where travellers stepping on to the street just across from "the Block" come face to face with a graffito that speaks volumes about the Aboriginal sense of belonging to the land and dispossession.

"40,000 years is a long, long time. 40,000 years is still on my mind," it reads.



REUTERS



- REUTERS

*Cathy Freeman competes in the 400m, 200m and 4x400m relay. The finals are on September 25, 28 and 30 respectively.