Sydney 2000 remembered: When Cathy was almost caught up in an opening ceremony failure

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Opinion

September 20, 2025 — 5.11am

In Sydney Town, it has been a week of reminiscing – last Monday being 25 years to the day since Cathy Freeman lit the Olympic Cauldron and a fortnight of magic began.

Of course, you pretty much have to be over 30 to mist up at the memories the way the rest of us oldies do. So, praise the Lord, pass me my pipe, and let me re-tell, one more time for the road, my favourite yarn from that night.

Mark Schwarzer (football), Brad Fittler (rugby league), Cathy Freeman (Olympian), Ian Thorpe (Olympian), John Aloisi (football), Louise Savage (Paralympian), Andrew Johns (rugby league), Tim Sullivan (Paralympian).

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.” As William Wordsworth once wrote, so it was again.

And that was it, felt like in that dawn of the new millennium, as the world journeyed to Sydney, and we Australians – and it really felt like we had all done it on the night – put on a show in that opening ceremony that made us all burst with pride.

Oh, how we roared as our people strutted their stuff, singing, dancing, cracking whips on charging horses straight from the Snowy, twirling on Hills Hoists, sailing in midair, and pushing a thousand Victa lawnmowers in perfect synchronicity as the Extravaganza Australiana proceeded without a hitch.

But now look as, at the climactic moment to fall, lean forward to see who is going to light the torch!

Cathy Freeman at the Sydney 2000 opening ceremony.

Yes, it is none other than Cathy Freeman, standing like a statue of Australian liberty in a pool of water, torch held high, as we lost our minds.

And here, truly, was the most memorable moment of all for the 100,000-plus of us who were privileged to be there, the one we really will recount when the days grow old, and we grow cold.

Watch now, as “Cathy” – for from now on, she will only need her first name to be identifiable – lowers the torch to the water. And now, as if by magic, a ring of fire sprouts around her – the outline of the cauldron, which now slowly rises above her, before heading off on rails to its permanent position atop the mothership, high above the stadium ... and just short of its destination, the damn thing stops!

We feel a rising panic. Can someone make like Uri Geller and will the cauldron to continue rising by mental force alone? Move, move, MOVE! One person in the whole stadium remains a picture of calm: Freeman. Even as, in her ear, a director says: “There’s a technical problem, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed shortly ...” followed by someone else shouting “F---! F---! F---!” The line goes dead.

Cathy Freeman celebrates her gold medal run in 2000.

Oh, how we quivered in the stands.

Is that bloody flame about to fizzle out and kill off the whole damn Sydney Games? Are we going to set a new Olympic and world record for national humiliation, right when triumph seemed at hand?

Unbeknownst to us, however, deep in the bowels of the stadium, a supremely Australian thing is about to take place. For you see, in our history, we’ve always known there has been no problem so great that it can’t be fixed at least in the short term with fencing wire and elbow grease, and if that still fails ... get a bigger hammer and give it a bigger bloody whack.

So now, as lights are flashing, and alarms are ringing, all the computer overrides have failed, and the flame is just seconds from going out, a frustrated mechanic decides on the latter option, grabs a monkey wrench and gives the whole thing a bloody big belt.

Something clicks! Something whirrrrrrs. Chains move. The cauldron moves up to the mother ship. And the flames shoot skywards!

The country is SAVED!

A letter to the editor in the Herald captured the wonder: “All we needed was for a little bloke in greasy overalls and Chesty Bond singlet to stroll up, cigarette in mouth and hands in pockets, give the thing a kick with his hobnailed boots before declaring that this model always did that, that it would cost a bomb to repair ’cos you couldn’t get parts and how he couldn’t possibly look at it before next Thursday week. Now that’s trooly, rooly Australian.”

Norman keeps coming back for more

I’m like an alcoholic who has sworn off the booze, but suddenly sees a sparkling Chardonnay. Surely, just one glass can’t hurt?

Greg Norman and South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas at LIV Golf in Adelaide last year.

Time and again, I’ve said to myself that this my last go at Greg Norman and the LIV disaster, only for Greg to offer a stuff-up that I can’t resist. But this time, I mean it. This is my last go. See, just last week Greg signed off from the rebel golf league he once ran, so I hope I’ll be excused if I blow a few more raspberries his way?

“After four unforgettable years,” Greg announced, “I have officially closed out my time with LIV Golf, and reflecting with nothing but gratitude, pride and achievement. Together, we built a movement that changed the game globally. We created opportunities for both players and fans and broadened the ecosystem of golf.”

Nah, Greg. You trashed what little was left of your legacy, launched a golf civil war, and have built nothing that will outlast the last billion dollars spent. But, go on ...

“We truly globalised the game and expanded golf’s reach to fans around the world. We brought entertainment, innovation and private equity into golf (including to the PGA Tour), positioning the sport as an asset class. It’s been an incredible chapter, and I’m so proud of what we accomplished.

“My commitment to do what was and still is the right thing for golf, the players and fans never wavered.”

Yeah, nah. Greg, you just held your nose and took the money, like they all did.

Lleyton’s defence sails over the baseline

This week, Lleyton Hewitt’s mob, in defending the charge that during a Davis Cup encounter last year, our Davis Cup captain had made physical contact with a Doping Control Officer, made this statement:

“In December 2024, Lleyton Hewitt AM was notified of an alleged breach of the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme following submission of manipulated video evidence to the International Tennis Integrity Agency.”

Lleyton Hewitt fronted the media after receiving his two-week ban.

Seriously?

“Manipulated video evidence?” The Herald lawyers will tell me if I can say this, but if they give me the all-clear, Yer Honour, I call – consults legal notes, for the right term – bullshit.

It is all the more ludicrous because in the initial hearing, Hewitt made no such claim. Case closed. Move on, Lleyton, and cop it sweet.

The prosecution, from the cheap seats, rests.

A job (very) well done: Coady signs off

When I was a little boy, one of my mother’s nursery rhymes, was along the lines of “I am Big Ben/ Hear what I say/ All you other clocks/ Get out my way,” all to the tune of Big Ben’s bells, and that of the Sydney GPO’s clock.

As it happens, the Big Ben I’ve been dealing with for the better part of my Herald career has been sports editor Ben Coady, whose last act at the paper after all that time, has been to put this column to bed, tuck it in tight, and make sure all is ship-shape. (This item was slipped in late by his replacements.)

In all our decades together, I guess we might have had a cross word, but if so, I can’t remember it. Instead, he has been softly spoken steel. A tower of strength without the bells. A sure hand capable of juggling my stuff at the same time as that of another dozen journos, and somehow never dropping the ball. And yes, it’s possible that metaphor doesn’t work and is a bit clunky – and if so, it’s because, for the first time in yonks, I haven’t got Ben there to dip in and fix it.

In the odd editorial crisis, every 10 years or so, he’s been my go-to guy, the surest source of sage counsel there is, the one whose fine instincts were never affected by billowing smoke and sirens going off. He was Big Ben, I’d hear what he said, and follow his advice accordingly.

Beyond all that, he is a fine man, as devoted to his family as his work. Go well, Big Ben, and thank you for everything.

What They Said

A reader reminisces for the Daily Aus (thank you, I know) about his favourite memory from the 2000 Olympics, after the opening ceremony was over: “We were walking from the stadium to the train station and there was a guy standing at the entry to a bridge yelling out ‘Froggy, Froggy, Froggy, Oui, Oui, Oui’ (with a strong French accent).”

Cathy Freeman, 25 years after lighting the Olympic flame, and winning gold in the 400 metres at the Sydney Olympic stadium: “Stepping into retirement, they don’t give you a manual for that. Being part of a story that takes on its own phenomenon in terms of its impact, no one gives you a manual for that either.”

Arsenal fans to Ange Postecoglou’s Nottingham Forest, as the latter crashed to defeat: “Are you Tottenham in disguise?”

Ange Postecoglou has had a tough start at Nottingham Forest.

The Canberra Raiders’ Jamal Fogarty: “I have played like Jamal Fogarty this year.” A surprising winner of the Michael Clarke Award for Gratuitous Third-Person References. One of Fogarty’s assets has always been humility.

Wallaroos captain Siokapesi Palu after they were knocked out of the World Cup: “We’re looking at a group of players who are young mums, who are balancing looking after their kids. People who are working full-time, working nine to five and then having to back it up with back-to-back trainings ’til 9pm and then having to repeat that the next day. We do need to be invested in so that we can produce good rugby.”

Cronulla Shark Toby Rudolf on scoring a try against the Roosters: “I would love to live in that minute for a bit longer than a minute. I’d love to live in it for an hour, to be honest, or a day.”

Toby Rudolf celebrates the elimination final win over the Sydney Roosters

After sealing his team a spot in next week’s semi-final, Rudolf took the opportunity to beg Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to help update Cronulla’s dilapidated stadium. “Anthony Albanese give us your money, please. I know we own it [the stadium], I’m sorry we own it, can you buy it back off us?” It’s not his money, Toby. It’s ours. And rugby league has already received squillions.

Roosters chair Nick Politis, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph in January: “My view is if somebody’s caught doing cocaine or leaning over snorting something, we’re going to get rid of them. Our stance is zero tolerance. We are very strong on it. Trent [Robinson] is very strong on it.”

Politis, backpedalling so fast he could win the Tour de France backwards, after the name of his favourite player, Victor Radley, emerged in a police investigation into Souths’ Brandon Smith, showing up in text messages that, prima facie, connected Radley to ordering cocaine: “What is ‘zero tolerance’? You have to weigh all this up very carefully with your lawyers. Zero tolerance means you punish a player more severely than we ever have before.” Uh, no, Nick. Look up “zero”. In the end, Radley copped a 10-match suspension and a $150,000 fine, but will stay with the Roosters – a tolerable result.

Jessica Hull after winning bronze on Tokyo.

Team of the Week

Gout Gout. Made the semi-finals of the World Athletics Championship 200M at the age of just 17.

Jessica Hull. From the ’Gong, she won bronze in the 1500m World Championships.

The Davis Cup. Underwhelming display by our team in losing to Belgium. The only pleasing thing was to see Tony Roche still there.

The Rugby Championship. There have been dud years, but this has been a great one, the most interesting one since forever –everyone on two wins and two losses. The Wallabies are now left with the main event: two Tests of the Bledisloe to come, starting next Saturday at Eden Park!

All Blacks. Suffered their biggest defeat in history as they were beaten 43-10 by South Africa, at Eden Park. Behind 17-10 at half-time, they simply fell apart in the most un-All Black manner conceivable.

Nick Daicos. Will likely win the Brownlow Medal, which will make him the first winner from Collingwood since 2011. (Oh yes, I know my Brownlow Medal nights backwards. Would never miss a broadcast. RIVETING stuff.)

Wallaroos. Lost 46-5 to Canada in the World Cup quarter-finals.

Adelaide Crows. As far as falls from grace go, theirs is right up there!

x/Twitter: @Peter_Fitz