Brendan Ward

A re-run of Cathy Freeman’s heart-stopping 400 metre race at the Sydney Olympics in September 2000 recently animated the sails of Sydney’s Opera House, a reminder, if ever there was one, that sport trumps art in fostering national pride.

Absent from those sails was an artistic feat also worth recalling from that Olympic year: an Australian pianist, a migrant from the Netherlands, completed a marathon to rival any on the sporting field.