Those are Cathy Freeman's words, spoken as she looked back on a remarkable career in athletics that included, in the view of an Australian television station, a starring role in the greatest moment in her country's Commonwealth Games history.

Running did not just make Freeman happy - it made her globally famous - and in a way that went beyond the boundaries of the sporting world.

That famous Commonwealth Games moment played an important part in Australia's social history.

It happened in Victoria, British Columbia, at the 1994 Games, where Freeman won two gold medals on the track, and won the hearts of millions back home in Australia and all around the world.

When she left for Canada the then 20-year-old made sure she had a flag that had been flown for the first time only 23 years earlier - the Australian Aboriginal Flag.

By then she had become a role model for the Aboriginal population.

Her people had lived in Australia for 50,000 years but the official national flag was designed with little more than a century of colonial rule in mind.

That was why, way back in 1938 when Sydney became Australia's first host city of the then Games, the aboriginal people declared a "day of mourning" rather than join in the celebrations of the "150th birthday" of Australia.

Those celebrations, based on the settlement of the country by Europeans, gave the Aborigines "no reason to rejoice" said their leader Jack Patten.

The Games and all the celebrations around them were yet another example of the Europeans overlooking the indigenous people of Australia and their struggles, he said.

Freeman was born in Mackay, Queensland, three hours from her extended family who lived at Woorabinda, an Aboriginal mission.

Her athletic talent took her away from Mackay but her heart remained there.

Freeman won her first Commonwealth Games gold medal when she was 16, in the sprint relay at Auckland in 1990. In doing so she became the first female Aboriginal gold medallist in the Games’ then-60-year history.

When she won the 400 metres in Victoria she went on a lap of honour with two flags intertwined and the world took notice.

Arthur Tunstall, who was more "Empire" than "Commonwealth" and who was 16 at the time of the 1938 Games, was outraged by Freeman's actions.

In his role as Australia's Chef de Mission he ordered the athletics team officials to inform Freeman not to display the Aboriginal flag after future events, or she would be sent home.

Freeman won the 200m too - and again paraded both flags.

Tunstall reprimanded Freeman and there was a huge public debate back home.

It was Tunstall who took a pasting, not Freeman.

Even Paul Keating, the Australian Prime Minister, said: "The Games revealed that the overall sentiment of Australians is for the reconciliation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians."

Freeman mostly kept a dignified silence, but she did say it was the highlight of her athletic career at that point in her life and she wanted to encourage young Aboriginals "to achieve something".

Her pride in both her flags made such an impression that at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Australia's Aboriginal culture was a key theme.

And who was chosen to light the flame at the Opening Ceremony? Cathy Freeman – who then raced to a famous victory in the 400m.

After her retirement from athletics in 2003 - the year after she won another sprint relay gold at the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games - she founded the Cathy Freeman Foundation.

It works with remote communities to close the gap in education between indigenous and non-indigenous Australian children.