The broken cauldron
On Friday 15 September 2000 the whole country held its breath as it was confirmed that Cathy Freeman would light the cauldron at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, we would all hold our breath later due to a big technical malfunction.
Cathy Freeman is a First Nations woman and elite athletewith Kuku Yalanji and Burri Gubba descent. She won her first race at eight years old. Her main event was the 400m sprint and her PB was 48.63- making her one of the fastest women in the world- ever.
The 2000 Olympics were Cathy’s time to shine, they were also the centenary of women participating at the Olympic Games. The torch entered the stadium and did its final lap being carried by some of our greatest women Olympians,with 15 gold medals between them.
They were, Betty Cuthbert, Raelene Boyle, Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland de la Hunty, Shane Gould, annd Debbie Flintoff-King who was the one that handed the final torch of the relay to Cathy Freeman.
Side note, it’s fitting that the final runner was a First Nation woman because the first runner of the torch relay in Australia was First Nations woman (and eventual senator for the Northern Territory) Nova Peris.
Nova Peris received the flame at Uluru and ran the first leg of the relay on Australian soil barefoot to honour her ancestry, her Elders and the spirits at Uluru. Nova Peris- a champion! Anyway, back to Cathy.
It wasn’t immediately obvious that Cathy was going to be the last runner of the relay and the lighter of the cauldron- this was Australia’s biggest and most well kept secret at the time. As the moment neared the whole nation held its breath to see if she would pass the torch to anyone else.
And then she started climbing a long staircase towards a pool of water.
Cathy walked in the middle of that pool and then it was clear. It’s Cathy- she is the final runner! She was about to light the cauldron! She dipped the torch to the water while standing in the middle of the pool and lit a ring of fire around her. The ring of fire eventually revealed itself to be a huge ring shaped cauldron and it began to rise above a motionless Cathy making her look engulfed in a waterfall that was on fire. The cauldron was being lit! It’s happening!
Relive the moment here, from 4:02:44
Until it wasn’t….
As the cauldron was rising, the conveyor mechanism that made it rise tripped an emergency sensor which caused the cauldron to just immediately stop and hover above Cathy, at the base of the mechanism designed to move the cauldron to the roof of the stadium. The cauldron wasn’t connected to mains gas yet- it would connect once it reached the roof of the stadium it was being powered by gas tanks and the gas was running out. The cauldron just hovered in mid air for about four minutes while engineers scrambled to restart the mechanism.
Cathy just stood there, all that time holding her pose. Eventually the mechanism was restarted and the cauldron made it to the stadium roof with barely moments to spare before the gas ran out and the flame would have been extinguished before it made it to the roof!
Because the cauldron mechanism was so complicated, the structure was built into the stadium under extreme secrecy. So much so the builders didn’t even know what it was. cauldron designer, Michael Scott-Mitchell designed the sequence with Cathy in mind four years earlier except he only found out that she would indeed light the cauldron in the early hours of the day of the Opening Ceremony. The cauldron was added to the heritage register in 2010 and now sits at Cathy Freeman Park. Cathy Freeman went on to continue being the best in the world.
She won the 400m gold medal at the Sydney Olympics where the whole nation- the whole country in fact- stopped to watch the epitome of Blak excellence be crowned the best in the world, and on home turf.
Watch Cathy bring the 400m gold home!
