Hello Ms Shaw and fellow students today I am talking about the events of Cathy Freeman’s life that made her famous. Cathy was born in the Queensland town of Mackay on the 16th of February 1973. She is the daughter of Norman and Cecelia Freeman and had 3 brothers and an older sister named Anne-Marie who died of cerebral palsy in 1990. Cathy Freeman took up athletics at the age of 2 years old and was coached by her step-father. Cathy exploded onto the athletics scene at an early age winning her first gold medal at the age of 16 at the Auckland commonwealth games in 1990 in the 4x100 m relay event. She was the first Aboriginal to win a gold medal at the commonwealth games as well as one of the youngest. At this time Nelson Mandela had walked to freedom after being released from jail. She went on to the world junior championships that same year in Bulgaria and came 5th …show more content…
In this year she was part of the world’s elite runners and competed in the Commonwealth games in Victoria, Canada. Cathy competed in the 200m and 400m events and won gold medals for both. This made her well known to the entire world as a top contender for the next Olympic games in 1996. Cathy set a lot of personal best times and Australian records and seemed to be at the pinnacle of her running career but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be beat. This was shown at the Olympics when she won a silver medal in the 400m event, which was the only event in which she competed for in the Atlanta, Olympics. Cathy came 1st later in the same year in the IAAF world championships in Milan. Cathy also won a gold medal at the world championships and regained some confidence, until a foot injury sat her out for the 1997-98 seasons. During the same time of her injury the spacecraft pathfinder had finally landed on mars. Cathy came back in 1999 for the world Championships in which she won gold for the 400m and won silver at the indoor championships in Japan. In 2000 Cathy was competing