Summer Olympics 2000 Perec said harassment made her leave

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Thursday, September 28
Perec said harassment made her leave
Associated Press

PARIS -- French track star Marie-Jose Perec, who fled Sydney before her planned Olympic 400-meter showdown with Cathy Freeman, says fear overwhelmed her dream of obtaining a third Olympic gold medal and she "cracked."

"I missed the most important rendezvous I ever had with myself," she was quoted Thursday as saying by the French sports daily L'Equipe. "I cracked when I shouldn't have cracked. I was defeated."

Perec made the remarks in a lengthy interview with a L'Equipe reporter in Sydney, in a telephone conversation she initiated from her apartment in Paris, where she has locked herself up since her return. The paper put brief extracts of the interview on its Internet site.

"I have so much sadness inside me," the paper quoted Perec as saying. The track star sobbed at several points in the phone call.

"I cracked. That's all. I could only think of one thing: Go, far away. Fast."

She said she did not fear Freeman, the Australian whose duel with Perec had been expected to be a high point of the Olympics.

"Freeman didn't frighten me, and she still doesn't frighten me today," Perec was quoted as saying. She added that she was in top form and thought she could have run the race in less than 49 seconds; Freeman won in 49.11.

Perec said her fear grew out of harassment from strangers, at her hotel, in supermarkets, and everywhere else.

"There wasn't a day that I wasn't tracked, like an animal, truly," she said.

In particular, she said she had been threatened by a man who knocked at her hotel room door.

"I opened it and he tried to force the door. I threatened to call the police but he said he didn't care."

"I was so afraid, so afraid," she sobbed.

Perec said other people "made threatening gestures."

"Several times I went to a supermarket and each time there were problems ...," she said.

"All of a sudden, that morning, I grabbed my bag and nothing else mattered, not even the gold medal that I came for. No, nothing else mattered."

Perec returned to Paris on a flight from Singapore, where her American boyfriend, Anthuan Maybank, had an altercation with an Australian TV cameraman that ended with police questioning.

The president of the French Athletics Federation, Philippe Lamblin, last week told the French daily Le Parisien that Perec put pressure on herself by making her own living arrangements in Sydney.

However, Perec said that her boyfriend was refused permission to reside with the French team also, so it was out of the question that she do so.

"I've always had the habit of doing everything alone," she said. "I never ask for help."

Perec expressed a sense of amazement at her own actions.

"Life is really bizarre, no?"

"It's like me. The only time in my life that I really made every effort, everything needed to go all the way, the time that it counted the most for me, I didn't make it."

Asked if she would return to competition, she said she still needed time to recuperate before making the decision.

"A champion has to fight, nonstop ... (and) needs strength and energy," Perec said. "If I had to respond today, I would say no."

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