To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a survey. The response was overwhelming! We chose 50 of them to re-live, one a day, before new memories are made in Paris. Scroll on for today's memory.
Three Australian women won individual Olympic gold at the Sydney 2000 Games: Cathy Freeman, Susie O'Neill and Lauren Burns.
The latter did so in taekwondo — shuffling, pivoting, roundhouse-kicking and screaming her way to victory in a gold medal match against Cuban fighter Urbia Melendez Rodriguez.
Burns, the daughter of 1970s singer Ronnie Burns, grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie series with her brother.
Watch the video at the top of the page to see the moment Lauren Burns won taekwondo gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics!
And after winning 12 national titles, she got the opportunity to unleash her Ninja Turtle moves at the Sydney Games, where taekwondo, a Korean combat sport, made its Olympic debut.
Burns, a fearless competitor from Melbourne, defeated her Cuban rival 4-2 in the women's 49kg competition, creating history in front of a lively crowd at the State Sports Centre.
"The first thought that came over me was, 'Yep, I did it', because I was so focused on that process," Burns said, as quoted on the Australian Olympic Committee's website.
"I just knew I was going to win because I had put in my heart, soul and every bit of my being, every ounce of my concentration, and it had all come together. Being in the moment, reacting in the moment and just trusting that I was going to make the right decisions was so powerful, but it was all about the process and playing the game.
"I spoke to my sports psychologist and he said to me, 'You are just doing an ordinary thing on an extraordinary day', so that was the mindset I went in with, and it wasn't until the referee gave the decision and I went over to my coach that it started to sink in.
"Someone handed me the Australian flag, and I found my family and friends then I ran around the stadium, being swept up in the moment."
She remains the only Australian to have won Olympic gold in taekwondo.
"They would have had to chop off my legs to stop me,'' Burns told The Sydney Morning Herald 10 years after the win.
After standing on the top step of the podium and having her gold medal draped around her neck, she retired as a legend of the sport.
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