ABSTRACT
At the climax of the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Cathy Freeman stood waiting. Surrounded by a ring of fire, Olympic torch in hand, she held it aloft with a global audience watching. Freeman, the young Aborigine woman athlete and national hero, was cast to represent all of Australia on the world stage. But something was amiss. The immense bowl now lit with the Olympic flame, which had been passed from nation to nation to Freeman, was not moving up the track to its final resting place high above the Olympic stadium in Parramatta,1 a suburb of Sydney. For several interminable minutes engineers struggled to get the huge dish moving as Freeman stood patiently waiting, torch still raised above her. A major embarrassment seemed to loom in the hushed air of the stadium. Finally, the flaming bowl she had lit lurched forward, rising above the crowd, reaching its destination. Fireworks ensued. The ceremony came to a dramatic conclusion fitting for such programmed events.
