阅读理解
The first morning I awoke in the house where Cathy Freeman once lived-in Miller Street, Richmond, an inner city suburb of Melbourne, my eyes caught upon a black and white sticker, with a name and number on it, pasted(粘贴)to a mirror beside the bed.The number and word were “48.60, Atlanta”.Cathy had typed the famous prediction(预言)on a sticker ages before the 1996 Olympic Games, as an affirmation(断言)of the time she wanted to run in the 400m final.
Cathy thought she was typing the time that black French woman, the pretty MarieJose Perec, had run to win the 400m gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.She believed she’d have to aim to run at least that fast in Atlanta but she got it wrong.Perec ran slower, 48.83 seconds in Barcelona.But what matter? The power of the mind!In Atlanta Cathy ran what she typed, or near enough, 48.63.To gaze(注视)at that time, still there, to see her grand ambition(抱负)-it was then a whole second faster than she had run before-was to become history.As I stood there I saw her once more in slow motion, in Atlanta, pushing herself to the edge, and beyond.Above the number was another sticker with the words “World’s Greatest Athlete”.They were the words Cathy had copied from an old sticker that her mother had given her as a teenager, a legend(座右铭)to paste on her bedroom wall to flow into her daughter’s mind, and it had worked.