THE LEGEND

Beaten by cheats, but still the victor

HER most vivid memory is the pain. There’s been plenty of that in Raelene Boyle’s life, but what happened in the 200m final at the 1972 Munich Olympics still lives at the forefront of her mind.

“I do remember the unbelievable pain I felt at the end of the 200m in Munich because I tried so hard,” she explains. “Bursting with pain is the wrong way to say it but I felt like I was going to explode with pain. I was chasing her [Renate Stecher] down and I was getting so close, I was straining everything I had.”

Stecher was a drug cheat, part of an East German doping regime that denied Boyle Olympic gold in the 100m and 200m in Munich.

She holds no personal animosity towards Stecher, more anger at the system that conspired against her and the fact the International Olympic Committee turned a blind eye.

“I feel sorry for them because they didn’t have the freedom of lifestyle and weather and so many other things that I have as an Australian,” Boyle says.

“So I think I fall back on that often and say, ‘Well, I got so much more than Renata Stecher’ because I was given the benefit of freedom.”

Boyle lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, loves gardening and recently returned from a trip to the Antarctic.

She still keeps a close eye on her sport. Cathy Freeman is one of her all-time favourites, and she has great admiration for Sally Pearson.

Boyle compares the honour of being elevated to legend status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame to when she wheeled her friend Betty Cuthbert into the Sydney Olympic Stadium as part of the opening ceremony in 2000.