, and later Cathy Freeman joined them to make an indelible image.
Barty was upholding the ideal of an athlete as gracious, modest, sporting and balanced as well as lavishly talented and highly accomplished. This was both the lightest and heaviest part of her freight. Actually, there’s one of their type just up the road: Australian men’s Test captain Pat Cummins. Between them this summer, Barty and Cummins have helped to re-establish the centrality of sporting in sport. They’ve re-moulded what had been thought to be an immutable model to succeed. They’ve made this the summer of Ashes to Ash.
Barty is not outwardly sentimental. She can and does bang on about “processes” with the best of them. Her sentiment is in what she does. And yet it’s easy to imagine that when at last she was able to turn the lights out sometime on Sunday morning, she allowed herself a little tear.