“Cos I’m Free “Cathy Freeman
By Grant Jarvie
Today September 25, 2025, marks 25 years since Cathy Freeman won gold at the Sydney Olympic Games.
• 1973 Born 16 February Cathrine Astrid Salome Freeman.
• 1990 1st First Nation Australian women to win a Commonwealth Gold Medal. Three days after winning her medal she lost her older sister Anne-Marie.
• 1994 Freeman’s unwavering commitment to recognising her ancestry came to the forefront at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in British Columbia, Canada. She unfurled the Aboriginal flag following her victory in the 400m sprint. At that time, the flag wasn’t officially recognised as an Australian flag.
• 2000 wins 400m Olympic Gold Medal at the Sydney Olympic Games.
• 2001 Laureus named Freeman World Sportswoman of the year in the same year as she was awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award and the Medal of the Order of Australia.
• 2007 founded the Cathy Freeman Foundation working to help close the gap between First Nation and non-First Nation Australian children.
• 2023 one of 25 Australians of the Year to sign the yes vote in the indigenous voice referendum.
• 2025 Inaugural inductee into Stadium Australia Hall of Fame.
At the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, 16-year-old Catherine Astrid Salome Freeman became the first First Nation Australian to win a Commonwealth gold medal in track and field.
The following year, she was named Young Australian of the Year. She became a symbol of reconciliation between a black and white Australia in which she had much to forgive (Gillon, 2003: 15). She dedicated her career to her sister whom she lost in 1990.
Her grandmother, Alice Sibley, was one of the so-called stolen generation, taken from her parents at the age of 8 by a reviled Australian government policy that was supposedly designed to help integration. As a consequence of this 1950s programme, which saw First Nation children removed from their parents and settled with white families, Freeman remained unaware of her ancestry on her mother’s side. (Gillon, 2003: 15).
Her father, an outstanding footballer, left home when she was 5 and died of an alcohol-induced stroke aged 53. She was sexually molested at 11 and later abused by whites (Gillon, 2003: 15).
Her Olympic success has helped to challenge the face of prejudice, almost a taboo subject in Australia at the time.
The Olympic reception following her victory in the final of the 400 m was in stark contrast to the day she travelled to an athletics meeting aged 13. Waiting outside Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station, she was ordered to move on by a group of middle-aged white women, when the whole adjacent seating area lay vacant (Gillon, 2003: 15).
As Cathy Freeman held the Olympic torch aloft during the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, she did so in a different Australia from the one experienced by her parents.
She herself had become one of Australia’s greatest ever sporting icons, but also a symbol of the progress and continuing struggle that First Nation Australians and First Nation Australian women in particular have endured in order to win many civil and political rights.
In 2023 she joined the indigenous voice referendum calling for Australians to vote for constitutional change and further recognise indigenous people.
From an early age the athlete carried the words Cos I’m free on her right arm. Cathy Freeman was more than an athlete or Olympian or liberator or agent of change but all of these and more.
