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Perec vows never to return to Australia
PARIS, Sept 28 (AFP) - France's triple Olympic gold medallist Marie-Jose Perec said Thursday she will never set foot in Australia again, claiming she was forced to flee the country before her much-hyped Olympic clash with Cathy Freeman because of the behaviour of Australians towards her in the street. Perec, frequently sobbing during the telephone interview with French sports daily L'Equipe, claimed she was "completely wiped out" and when asked if she would compete again she said: "If the decision had to be taken today then it would be no." And the Guadeloupe-born star also took a swipe at Freeman, who took her 400m title, by saying she would have won had she competed at the Sydney Olympics. The Frenchwoman made a dramatic departure from Sydney with her agent claiming a stalking incident had prompted her flight, although French Athletics officials have since cast doubt on that claim. On the flight home Perec and her partner Anthuan Maybank were detained for 11 hours by Singapore police after Maybank had an altercation with a photographer in the transit lounge at Changi. No charges were laid. In her interview with L'Equipe Perec said that she had been hounded throughout her stay in Australia. "There was not a day went by without me being hunted like an animal, truly," Perec said. "People made threatening gestures and started following me. Several times, in a supermarket, there were problems. You can put up with words. But I was really frightened. "That's what made me leave. Suddenly, that morning, I took my bag and nothing more counted other than leaving - even the gold medal I had come for. "I will never set foot there again," said Perec, who said that Australia had been the land of her dreams. Perec said she would have run inside 49 seconds had she competed in the final - Freeman's winning time was 49.11sec. She said she had tried not to watch the Olympics on television but had seen Freeman win the 400m. "Then I felt completely wiped out, destroyed," wept Perec. "It was too hard. To find yourself there watching on TV when I should have been on the other side." She believed she would have defeated Freeman had she competed. "Everything we have had as results in training proves it. It's harder still because of that ... never in my career had I taken things so seriously. I had never done so much," she explained. Perec had trained in Rostock, Germany, with her coach Wolfgang Meier and on Wednesday France's athletics supremo Richard Descoux had questioned whether she was in peak condition for the Sydney Olympics. Descoux said that stars such as Perec and World Champion heptathlete Eunice Barber, who had been given special treatment by the French team, would henceforth have to comply with the standards that apply to all other athletes. "We have to start from zero again," said Descoux. "Today everything starts from scratch again for the favourites. Perec and Barber will be obliged to surrender to the obligatory requirements. "There is no one in the stadium who can say what sort of performance Perec was producing before leaving. It's inadmissable.
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