Susie O’Neill reflects on her Sydney Olympics gold medal swim 20 years on
To mark 20 years since her golden swim at the Sydney Olympics – a race that stopped the nation – Susie O’Neill has detailed how she had been crying with nerves until a phone call with her husband changed everything. LISTEN NOW
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Susie O’Neill has reflected on the phone call from her husband that changed everything before her Sydney Olympics gold medal win 20 years ago today.
The Queensland swimming champion’s unexpected win in the 200m freestyle on September 19, 2000, was one of the most memorable moments of the Sydney Games, considering the 200m butterfly was her pet event.
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Speaking on Nova 106.9 breakfast show, Ask, Kip, Luttsy and Susie, yesterday, O’Neill said she’d called husband Cliff Farley around lunch time on the day of the final, for which she’d qualified fastest, crying with nerves.
“In my mind the 200m fly (butterfly) was the big race for me and the 200m free was a big surprise to be honest,” she told her co-hosts.
“I saw I was in lane four and I thought ‘I should win this’.”
“As a consequence I got really nervous, like really nervous, like I was crying nervous. I rang Cliff and I was like ‘I don’t want to go out to the final tonight’. I didn’t. I wanted to do anything but go out and swim that night because I had the 200m free final and then I had the semis of the 200m fly.”
“In my mind I’d built it up to be the biggest thing in my head, if I didn’t succeed, I don’t know, it was just really big.”
Farley calmed her down, saying “Look, it’s a swimming race, go to the pool, put on your togs, and swim as fast as you can”.
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“It was like if you’re a balloon and it’s really tight and someone just pricks it. It was pressure release,” O’Neill said. “All my events after that I wasn’t as nervous for.”
She said walking onto the pool deck she was in a routine and didn’t notice the crowd, thinking nothing but “long and strong”.
“I’ve seen it a lot in pictures and I think ‘Oh wow, look at all those people cheering’,” she said.
O’Neill was brought to tears yesterday as co-hosts Ash Bradnam, Kip Wightman and David ‘Luttsy’ Lutteral surprised her with a “walk down memory lane” set up in the studio’s foyer, as well as the original podium from her gold medal ceremony, and a street art portrait by local artist Travis Vinson.
