Freeman has carried Australia's hopes on her back in Sydney.

They were, for such a long time, alone. There were attempts by the Portuguese and dalliances with the Dutch. And several near misses. History gives credit to Captain James Cook, a Brit, for the first extended contact. Sent south in 1768 to observe a most rare celestial event, the transit of Venus across the sun, Cook was en route to Indonesia when he stumbled upon this great unknown land of the south: Terra Australis Incognita. Its native people, the Aborigines, had no use for Cook and his kind. Still, Cook was impressed. "In reality they are far more Happy than we Europeans," he wrote in his diary. "The Earth and Sea of their own accord furnish them with all things necessary for life." But Cook also sensed something else about these people, part of the oldest continuous culture in the world. They were happy alone. Upon his departure he wrote, "All they seem'd to want was for us to be gone."

Today, she is alone. As she prepares for the Olympic Games, sprinter Cathy Freeman has isolated herself in a quest to win the women's 400 meters. In sports-mad Australia, where fans wave inflatable plastic wallabies, the 27-year-old runner has ascended to favorite daughter status. Tickets for the 400 sold out in a few hours. One writer has compared Freeman's fame Down Under to a combination of Princess Diana, David Beckham, Liz Hurley and Anna Kournikova. The Aussies mob her so much that she has occasionally resorted to wearing a wig upon leaving her Melbourne home. Earlier this summer, she simply left the country.

The attention is not without warrant. Freeman is Australia's strongest -- some would say only -- gold medal hopeful in track and field. More than that, she is locked into another most rare event, tied to a place, a time and a path -- like Venus between the earth and sun. This month, Freeman will be given the extraordinary opportunity to win gold at home in Australia. But she runs for more than her native country. She also runs for its native people. Cathy Freeman is Aboriginal.

Sprinting is a practice in solitude. Unlike other individual sports, there is no ball to engage, no looming foe. In a sprint, opponents linger on the periphery, locked in their own narrow world. For Freeman, the focus of this solitude has always been the same. From her early days, when she learned to run on the riverbeds of Mackay, Queensland, to her personal-best time in Atlanta, the woman known to Aborigines as "Sister Girl" has sought one thing: an Olympic gold.

If not for France's Marie-José Pérec, the opponent permanently lodged in Freeman's periphery, the Australian might have already achieved her dream. Born at the base of a volcano in Guadeloupe, Pérec shot to prominence by winning gold in Barcelona with a stellar 48.83 in the 400. Barcelona was also Freeman's debut, her appearance marking the first time an Aborigine had ever run an Olympic race. But her quest would end in the qualies.

In fact, it would take a few years for the Aussie to catch up with the long-legged, smack-talking Pérec. After losing in the 200 semis of the 1993 world championships, Freeman decided to spend more time perfecting her quarter-mile. On the flight home, the frustrated teen pulled out an air sickness bag and scribbled "48.60 Atlanta." Three years later, she would come close to her target, running 48.63. But Pérec would do her one better by running an Olympic-record 48.25, becoming the only woman or man to win 400 gold twice. Later that same week, Pérec would also win the 200.

Now, 10 years after bursting onto the international scene as a member of Australia's gold 4x100 relay team at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, Freeman is the odds-on favorite, while Pérec's star has faded due to illness and injury. Says Ato Boldon, the '96 bronze medalist in the men's 100 and one of Freeman's training partners this summer: "I just think it will take somebody in a vehicle to beat Cathy come Sydney."

It is her time now. And yet in some ways, Freeman has become a minor character in her own story. In a country where indigenous politics are played fierce, she finds herself a sort of political football, claimed by white and black Australia alike. For whites, Freeman is the face of the Olympics, representing an opportunity to resurrect a dismal track and field program on the world's stage. But for Aborigines, who didn't even win the right to vote until 1962, her success means so much more.

In the past, Freeman has shied away from politicizing her role as athlete, while still finding a way to express pride in her heritage. It began at the '90 Commonwealth Games, when the 16-year-old runner wore a three-toned wristband bearing the Aboriginal colors. And it continued at the same event four years later, when Freeman made headlines by running her 400 victory lap with the black, red and yellow Aboriginal flag before grabbing the red, white and blue Australian one. The action prompted Australian team chief Arthur Tunstall to publicly criticize Freeman. Her response? She went out and won the 200, then grabbed both flags and circled the track -- an act she repeated at the '97 and '99 worlds after winning the 400.

In the year 2000, a majority of Australia's 386,000 Aborigines still find themselves living in third world conditions. The mortality rate of Aboriginal children is three times that of white children. Indigenous people share both the lowest life expectancy and the highest imprisonment rate. Australia spent much of the past decade passing "native title" laws by which the country sought to make land accessible to its original Aboriginal owners. But a change in government leadership from Labor to the more conservative Liberal-National coalition in 1996 has slowed that process. "This country started on genocide -- they wanted to wipe the Aboriginal people out," says Anthony Mundine, an Aborigine who achieved stardom as a rugby player but who now makes his living as a boxer. "Today they are still trying to do that in different ways, behind closed doors."

The accusation of genocide is a serious one, but not without precedent. Three years ago, the Australian Human Rights Commission found the country's policies towards its indigenous people did indeed match the United Nations' definition of genocide. The commission's report, "Bringing Them Home," centered on what's known as the Stolen Generations: In 1918, the Australian government adopted a policy by which it sought to assimilate light-skinned Aborigines into the white way of life. For nearly 60 years, welfare officers and police acting as government agents forcibly removed or kidnapped Aboriginal children, placing them with white families or in foster care.

All this has not been lost on Freeman. Two of her grandparents were taken from the family and placed in foster homes on an island off Queensland. (Cathy's grandmother never knew her own birthday. When she died, her family had no idea how old she was.) Still, no one anticipated the stance Freeman would take just months before her moment in the sun. In July, she blasted the government for its insensitivity after Aboriginal Affairs minister John Herron said that the Stolen Generations didn't exist because "the proportion of separated Aboriginal children was never more than 10%."

"I was so angry, because they were denying they had done anything wrong," Freeman told reporters while training in London. "The fact is, parts of people's lives were taken away -- they were stolen. I'll never know who my grandfather was. I didn't know who my great-grandmother was. And that can never be replaced."

Freeman's comments revealed a side of her not previously seen, while fueling speculation about Olympic protests. In the past, she has rejected pleas by some Aboriginal leaders to boycott the Games. Now she has a standing invite to meet with Labor Party leader Kim Beazley after the Olympics, opening the door to a possible career in politics.

Her options are many, but most Aborigines believe the best thing Freeman can do is run against the world's best and win. "I think it would be great for Cathy and the community," says Geoff Clark, chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, a quasi-autonomous organization that allocates grants and suggests indigenous policies. "It would give us a sense of pride, respect and dignity that is difficult to achieve in a country where there is such a huge disparity between black and white people."

Adds Mundine: "In the end, she has to be herself. And by the girl's last statements, she is starting to be herself. She's never been so outspoken before."

She says all she wants to do is run. But the demands of her celebrity and the pressure to win have taken a toll. In June, having automatically qualified for the Games, Freeman shipped out to the U.K., away from the Murdochian eye of the Australian press. The move was a masterstroke. In London, the headlines concern whether or not singer Robbie Williams is shagging Ginger Spice. There's no talk of the nasty litigation between Freeman and her ex-lover and business manager, Nick Bideau. Freeman, who is now married to Nike rep Sandy Bodecker, sacked Bideau in May, severing her ties to the Melbourne International Track Club. But Bideau is suing Freeman for breach of contract, because the two had signed a deal after the Atlanta Games that called for him to manage her through the Sydney Games.

Freeman and Bideau reportedly split after Irish distance runner Sonia O'Sullivan -- who once lived with the couple -- came between them. (O'Sullivan and Bideau are now the parents of a 1-year-old girl.) But while Bideau's suit has drawn criticism from the Aussie press, Freeman has also taken some stick regarding her claim that she had limited knowledge of her assets under Bideau. She has reportedly earned around $2 million since January 1997.

Despite all the distractions off the track, Freeman has dominated on it. Since her last race with Pérec in Atlanta, she has owned the 400, winning 41 of 42 finals. Pérec, meanwhile, has struggled to regain her form. Stricken with the Epstein-Barr virus, the former model could barely walk at one point. Just recently, she has started a comeback and resumed the trash talk. In the French sports newspaper L'Equipe, Pérec accused a mysterious Australian businessman of attempting to purchase the details of her training regimen. (As if this story didn't have enough twists, Freeman's training partner, British sprinter Donna Fraser, once stood in as Pérec's body double in an ad for Pirelli.)

After pulling out of the Aug. 5 British Grand Prix because of a hamstring injury, Freeman resumed her brilliance in Monte Carlo, running the season's fastest time (49.48) against a field that included the United States' Jearl Miles-Clark, Jamaica's Lorraine Graham and Mexico's Ana Guevara. It was a race that emphasized Freeman's strength, notes John Smith, the man who trains Boldon, Maurice Greene and Inger Miller, among others. Earlier this year, Freeman spent five weeks under Smith's tutelage in Los Angeles, where he put her through a series of 30-, 60- and 80-meter drills. "We just went through the race pattern of the 100 and tried to allow it to make sense for the 400," Smith says. The sessions worked so well that Freeman is now considered a strong possibility to run the 200 in Sydney, especially after beating Miller -- the reigning world champ -- at a recent meet in England. (The idea of Freeman and Marion Jones in the same race should give the Aussie tabloids plenty to chew on.)

The talent has always been there. In the end, though, it is Freeman's inner strength that may prove the difference in the 400. "The hardest working woman in this business, bar none," is how Boldon describes her. Adds Smith: "Cathy's a very tough lady. She runs from an area inside her that's unique."

From this place inside, Sister Girl has come to accept her place in time. She remains impervious to those who say that a gold medal will have little impact on the Aboriginal community, and to the Australian Olympic Committee, which at one point threatened to strip medals from those who drape themselves in the Aboriginal flag. On the night of Sept. 25, in the light of the Evening Star, she will step onto the Sydney track and run her race for not one but two flags. Then, like Venus being absorbed by the sun, she will no longer be alone.

Cathy Freeman will be home.