Cathy Freeman inspires Australia's Matildas with surprise visit on eve of FIFA Women’s World Cup
Sydney 2000 gold medallist Freeman paid the Australian team a surprise visit in camp to the delight of many players that have the Olympic champion as their sporting hero.
Football
The entire Australia women's football team were sat, ready to hear their head coach Tony Gustavsson speak about tactics.
Instead of giving a lecture about strategy, Gustavsson played the Matildas a three-minute highlight video of Cathy Freeman, the Aboriginal Australian track athletics legend, who claimed Olympic women's 400m gold at Sydney 2000. After the video finished a surprise awaited the Matildas.
“When they turned the lights on, we turned around, and there she (Cathy Freeman) was. It was a huge surprise to us. A lot of girls were very emotional,” Australia midfielder Aivi Luik said about the meeting in Melbourne recently.
“She is such a down to earth girl, she is amazing. I still can’t believe that happened, because half a year ago, I remember over half of the team said that Cathy Freeman was their sporting hero. We just sat around and asked her questions informally, and she spoke back to us, like she was a friend.”
The 38-year-old Luik especially found inspiration in one thing that Cathy Freeman told the squad.
“My takeaway from what she told us, was that we know who we are, we know why we do this, and whilst we want to perform and give results for others outside the circle, at the end of the day, you believe in yourself, and you do it for yourself.“
“All athletes do what they do because they love their sport, and to not lose track of that gives you the confidence to go out there and do your job. That is what I took away from that,” Luik concluded.
Lydia Williams had Freeman as her role model growing up
Another player who found a lot of inspiration in Cathy Freeman is Lydia Williams. The Australia goalkeeper is the daughter of an American mother and a Aboriginal Australian father.
She grew up in an Aboriginal community in Kalgoorlie, before moving to Canberra at 11, where her American mother signed her up for football, but she could only join as a goalkeeper, as that was the only position left.
Thinking back to when she started playing, Williams recalls finding a lot of inspiration from watching Cathy Freeman claiming Olympic gold on home soil on 2000.
“Growing up, my role model was Cathy Freeman. I remember watching this (Olympic 400m final) on our TV set and being like: This is crazy. An indigenous woman, literally captivating all of Australia,“ Lydia Williams says in the Olympic Channel's World at their Feet series.
“She actually came to Kalgoorlie years earlier. My dad took me out to meet her, and he was like: ‘you are going to be like her one day’. And I think that really drove me to achieve.”
In 2016 Lydia Williams walked in the footsteps of her idol, as she played at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro for Australia.
Williams and Australia will try to improve their best result from a World Cup, which is reaching the quarter-finals, when they kick off the World Cup against Republic of Ireland on Thursday.
World at their Feet
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