DOCUMENTARY • SPORT
That Race: Revisiting the Most Extraordinary 400m Run in Australian Athletics History
In 2026, Fixon Media Group produced its second feature-length documentary. Following the national broadcast success of Six, the team turned its attention to a different kind of story; not a quest for the future, but a reunion with the past.
That Race revisits the 1996 Stawell Gift Women’s 400m Final, the race that announced Cathy Freeman to the world. Thirty years later, the seven women who stood on that start line are brought back together for the first time.
FILM
That Race
DIRECTOR
Didier Le Miere
PRODUCERS
David Griffin, Matthew McDonough, Tim Cherry
YEAR
2026
RUNTIME
45 minutes
STATUS
Melbourne Premiere - Astor Theatre, October 11, 2026
THE STORY
One race. Thirty years. Seven women.
On Easter Monday 1996, a young Cathy Freeman lined up off scratch at Australia’s oldest and most storied footrace, giving her seven competitors handicaps of up to 42 metres. Under grey skies and relentless rain, she produced an extraordinary come-from-behind victory, surging past the field in the final straight to win in 50.48 seconds on grass.
The performance stunned the crowd. It signalled the rise of an athlete destined for greatness. Later that year, Freeman claimed Olympic silver at Atlanta and broke the Australian 400m record. In 1997 she won World Championship gold. In 2000 she lit the Olympic flame at Sydney.
But That Race is not a film about Cathy Freeman’s career. It is a film about all seven women who were on that start line, the shared experience of that day, the lives they lived after it, and how one race became inseparably linked to a defining chapter in Australian sporting history.
THE PRODUCTION
A six-week window. A thirty-year story.
For a feature-length documentary, time is often the greatest asset available to a director. For That Race, the entire post-production process was required to be completed within six weeks, a condensed timeline that placed significant pressure on every stage of production.
Pre-production began in November and December 2025. Producers Matthew McDonough, David Griffin, and Tim Cherry worked through the Christmas and New Year period to locate the women involved in the 1996 race, many of whom had not been in contact with each other for decades, and coordinate filming schedules across multiple states.
Principal filming took place at Melbourne’s Albert Park, the home of Australian athletics, where the core interviews that form the narrative backbone of the film were captured. A second filming day at the home of veteran journalist Jon Anderson provided the historical framing and context the story needed.
The Albert Park day delivered the most powerful moment of the entire production. For the first time in almost thirty years, all seven women who competed in the 1996 final were in the same room. What began as a structured interview quickly became a genuine reunion, with memories, emotions, and reflections flowing naturally between women who shared one of Australian sport’s most remarkable moments. It could never have been scripted.
WATCH THE TRAILER
THE PREMIERE
Coming to the Astor Theatre, Melbourne.
That Race will have its Melbourne premiere at the Astor Theatre on October 11, 2026, one of Australia’s most iconic independent cinemas and a fitting home for a film about one of the country’s most iconic sporting moments.
Further details regarding tickets and future broadcast availability will be announced in due course
MOVING FORWARD
A story that deserved to be told properly.
That Race is Fixon Media Group’s second feature documentary and a continuation of the commitment made with Six – to find the human stories inside Australian sport and give them the screen time they deserve.
For the Victorian Athletic League, the film is a powerful celebration of the sport’s history and a reminder of the extraordinary moments that have taken place on the grass at Stawell.
For the seven women at the centre of it, it is a permanent record of the day they shared, told in their own words, thirty years on.
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