When Cathy Freeman won a gold medal at the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990, she was the first Indigenous Australian to win a track and field medal.
An elated Freeman told the media that ‘being Aboriginal means everything to me’. The joy of this win was shattered when she returned to Brisbane to learn that her older sister, who suffered from cerebral palsy, had died. This devastating loss ‘charged me [with] a sense of purpose,’ Freeman would later write. The young runner was still relatively unknown in 1990, but over the next decade she would become a household name both for her achievements on the track and for her politics.
Freeman was born in Mackay, Queensland, in 1973, and showed early promise as a runner. Competitive events and travel exposed her to racial prejudice and on one occasion, although she won all the events at a meet, she received only ribbons: the white girls who finished after her received the trophies.