Cathy Freeman

Freeman was, of course, Australia's favorite to win a gold medal in the 400 meters at the 2000 Olympics, held in Sydney. Like any athlete, Freeman wanted to win in order to meet her own goals, but she also knew that she was viewed as a representative of the Aboriginal people, and she wanted to win for them. "I could feel the crowd all over me," she told Mark Shimabukuro in the Sporting News. "I felt the emotion being absorbed into every pore of my body." When she won, with a time of 49.11 seconds, she was so relieved that she dropped to her knees on the track after completing the race.

Freeman's shoes were yellow, black, and red, traditional Aboriginal colors, but after she won, she took them off and ran her victory lap barefoot, in traditional Aboriginal style, carrying both the Australian and Aboriginal flags around the track as the crowd cheered. According to Andrew Phillips in Maclean's, an Aboriginal observer said, "Cath's done it for all of us." This time, instead of being chastised for carrying the Aboriginal flag around the track, she was widely celebrated.