When Cathy Freeman crossed the line to win the Olympic 400 metres gold at the 2000 Sydney Games, she was watched from the commentary position by fellow Australian Olympian Raelene Boyle, one of her former coaches.

As the woman who had carried sky-high home hopes into the Games sank to the track under the weight of her emotion, Boyle - a triple Olympic silver medallist whose medals might well have been of golden hue but for the East German doping regime - spoke for a nation in exclaiming: "What a relief!"

Down the years, so many sportsmen and women have spoken of that feeling in the aftermath of victory, with the common denominator being that they have entered their competition as the favourite. Or, exponentially more challenging, as the home favourite.

For Freeman the pressure had ratcheted up at the very start of the Games when she had emerged as the Australian to light the Olympic flame on behalf of the host nation at the Opening Ceremony.

As she stood in her luminous catsuit amid swirling water and swirling flame, a technical hitch threatened to throw the whole ceremony out of kilter and her position appeared briefly perilous.

Not the ideal preparation for an athlete expected to deliver the performance of her life shortly afterwards in the self-same stadium.

Thirty six years earlier, another nailed-on Australian Olympic certainty, Dawn Fraser, had voluntarily taken part in the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, despite a directive from the Australian Swimming Union that its swimmers should not do so, given the proximity of their competition.

For that, the woman who went on to earn a third successive 100m freestyle gold was banned for a decade. Puzzle that shift out...

Fraser, for her part, had already dealt with the pressure of being a home favourite, having secured her first gold at the Melbourne Games of 1956. For Freeman, however, there was the additional responsibility of representing not just Australia, but the Aboriginal people, as she became their first track and field Olympic champion.

Freeman had also been marketed to the max by her sponsors, with two massive photographs of her adorning a tower block close to Sydney Harbour Bridge.



The poster girl came through. But her subsidence to the track in the aftermath indicated the metaphorical weight she had carried into and through the 2000 Games.

A similar weight rested on the broader shoulders of the 1976 Winter Olympics poster boy, Franz Klammer, whose mission - and he had no choice but to accept it - was to win downhill gold in front of an adoring crowd of fellow Austrians at the Innsbruck Games.

Klammer, a 22-year-old from Carinthia, had created his personal pressure cooker by winning eight of the nine World Cup downhill events the previous year, eclipsing Switzerland's reigning Olympic champion Bernhard Russi.

So Austria was all set to beat their perennial skiing rivals on home snow. Sweet. And especially so as, to every Austrian follower of the sport, such a victory would only be natural justice following the travesty that had occurred shortly before the 1972 Sapporo Games.

Their 33-year-old multiple world champion Karl Schranz, had delayed his retirement to seek the crowning glory of an Olympic gold, but on the eve of competition he was banned from taking part by the 84-year-old outgoing US president of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, on the grounds of commercialism.

Schranz was welcomed back to Vienna by a crowed of 100,000 supporters, and the American Embassy in the Austrian capital was subjected to protests and bomb threats. Meanwhile, Russi took his gold.

Could any more pressure exist for an Olympic competitor?

Well, yes. Because by the time Klammer got to the starting gate in the downhill final, the 15th to go, Russi had already put in an inspired performance to take a commanding lead.



The Austrian soon fell a fifth of a second behind his Swiss rival's time over the 3,145 metres course. But a final 1000 metres that fell little short of lunacy in its risk-taking saw the home hope home to gold by the margin of a third of a second as 60,000 spectators sent bellows of triumph echoing around the neighbouring mountain-tops.

At the time, Klammer told reporters he had skied so close to a fence that he heard "a shout or scream from a lady," adding: "I thought I was hitting her with a pole...I thought I was going to crash all the way...Now I've got everything. I don't need anything else."

Earlier this month, while attending the Laureus World Sports Awards in Abu Dhabi, Klammer was invited - by me - to reflect upon his legendary performance, and - hopeful I know, but you have to try - to offer advice to the slew of Britons who are currently facing up to the challenge of providing Olympic gold for their own home crew next year.

"Being a home favourite is great," he told me. "It's a lot of pressure, but it's more satisfying if you are able to pull it off.

"But you don't have to even think about others. That just slows you down. What you have to do is get yourself into the best possible shape. Then it's all about the physical challenge, and technique. You have to be fully prepared physically. And the execution is what you have to do. It's just mental strength – no fear of losing."

Klammer took early note of a comment by his fellow Austrian, Toni Sailer, a triple Olympic champion at the 1956 Cortina Games. "Toni said once that you are a real champion if you win as the favourite," he recalled.

"The Olympics has so many outsiders. They have no pressure whatever. They can prepare themselves quietly without pressure. That's why it makes you a champion, if you win despite all that.

"I had to take it to the edge at Innsbruck, otherwise I wouldn't have won it.

"But when you are on top of your game, everything seems to be slower. You have all the time in the world to make decisions.

"If you are not on top of your game, the slope and the turns seem to come rushing towards you."

As London 2012 rushes towards a generation of home sportsmen and women desperate to impress, Klammer's advice is surely pertinent. Got that Ennis? All clear, Adlington?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames