Freeman a sure thing for 2000 Olympics

Freeman a sure thing for 2000 Olympics
Reuters

10 December 1999 – Sydney - Australia's World 400 metres Champion Cathy Freeman has been told she can miss next year's Australian Olympic trials to compete overseas.

Australian Athletics competition manager Brian Roe said on Friday that Freeman would be given an automatic place in Australia's track and field team for the 2000 Olympics after winning her second world title in Seville earlier this year.

Roe said that while details still had to be finalised, each of Australia's four medallists from the world championships were almost certain to be exempt from the qualifying process.

Pole vaulters Tatiana Grigorieva and Dmitri Markov and 20km walker Kerry Saxby-Junna won minor medals in Seville.

Australia's Olympic trials for track and field will be held next August, just a month before the start of the 2000 Games.

Freeman, who spends most of her time training and competing in Europe and the United States, has already said that she would prefer to continue racing overseas in the final month before the Games.

"If you're in the position she's in, it would be ridiculous to come back and compete in the trials," Freeman's manager Nick Bideau said.

"I don't see that it's going to help her more in her preparation for the Olympic Games to run the trials than to run (European) meetings against people who are hard and tough and likely to be challenging her for the medals in Sydney."