It does not take much to transport Katharine Merry back to the 25 September 2000.
The eyes of the world were on the Sydney Olympic Stadium, where 112,000 people were packed in to watch just one race, and in many ways one athlete. Few Olympic events have reached such magnitude before or since.
“I remember as we walked towards the stadium, it just got louder and louder, then the realisation ramped up,” said Merry, a quarter of a century later.
“You walk out and look up, and you literally can’t see the people at the back of the stand because they are so small.
“You think ‘what are you doing here? You can’t see anything.’ They’re here because it’s Cathy and everyone is waiting for the 400m final.”
Australia’s Cathy Freeman was the face of the 2000 Olympic Games, a home medal favourite in the women’s 400m who had already made history as the first Aboriginal Australian to win an individual Olympic medal with silver four years earlier in Atlanta.
Freeman won back-to-back world titles in the following years and was given the honour of lighting the Olympic torch at the Games’ opening ceremony.
It only served to heighten anticipation for the women’s 400m, which was set to be the ‘Race of the Games’.
While such fever pitch and fanfare may have caused some athletes to cower, it only served to relax Team GB’s Merry, who came into the race with strong medal hopes of her own.
“I was fully aware that the Games was going to totally be run by Cathy Freeman and what the nation expected,” she recalled.
“The pressure was just on her shoulders. It wasn’t like Super Saturday at London 2012 where it was divided across a few athletes, it was all on Cathy.
“I was just going in there to try and upset the party. We just went in there with no pressure on us. We loved it, the other seven of us in that field.
“The hype, the buzz, the expectation was absolutely massive. There was no talk about anything else around track and field.
“It was Cathy’s to lose, so I went in there with a ‘let’s have a pop at this’ attitude. If I could run to the best of my ability, I could have a go and be in the mix.”
The pre-race excitement was matched in the stadium that night. Though some memories of the day have faded in the 25 years since, the atmosphere and noise of the crowd has stayed strong.
“I remember the guy coming out with a huge megaphone calling us to the call room. I was walking to the call room thinking ‘this is it’,” said Merry.
“Many sports psychologists will tell athletes to treat it like it’s just another race but I didn’t look at it like that. I looked at it like it was as big as it was, because it wasn’t any other race; you have one opportunity not to mess it up. That helped me to be calm.
“[Before the race] I spent time with my coach Linford [Christie], his parting words were ‘have a good one, don’t cock it up’! That relaxed me.
“The roar was deafening. I have never been in a stadium with 112,000 people in it since.
“A couple of whistles later, everyone goes very quiet, and the man goes ‘on your marks’. That’s then when we saw Cathy in the spacesuit that she had only worn a couple of times before. That’s confidence because you have to run well if you wear something like that!
“The roar as the gun went was noticeable. I had never noticed it before in a race but I noticed it then, the volume level.”
Less than 50 seconds later, Merry was an Olympic bronze medallist thanks to a personal best run of 49.72s – the first time she had broken the 50-second mark.
Gold went to Freeman in what has become an iconic Olympic moment but Merry’s own achievement was history in its own right as she became Team GB’s first medallist in the event since Lillian Board in 1968.
It was all the more impressive given Merry had only switched to the event a year prior.
“I was chuffed,” she said. “There were so many folds to the whole occasion. It was a privilege to be a part of it, a privilege to run in lane three.
“I half wish at some point I could have been in the crowd watching.
“I ran under 50 seconds for the first time when I needed to. I was really happy. I could have done without the wheels falling off with about 60 metres to go but I will take it!
“People still talk about it 25 years later and I knew that would be the case because of the magnitude of the race.
“It was instantaneous to take in personally what I had done, though it took flipping ages for the big scoreboard to flash up!
“I don’t watch it back very often, but when I do I think ‘flipping heck!’. I am not really sure how I did that.
“It is still as special to me as it was at the time, and as I have got older I have appreciated it more.”
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