The long-awaited showdown between France's Marie-Jose Perec and Australia's Cathy Freeman could take place at the Paris World Championships in August after Perec announced her return to competition on Wednesday.
The 34-year-old Frenchwoman has not raced or spoken to the media since leaving the Sydney Olympics in controversy in 2000, claiming to have received death threats on the phone in her hotel room.
But the 1992 and 1996 400 metres Olympic champion said she is now training in San Diego with her boyfriend, Anthuan Maybank, and coach Brooks Johnson with the aim of making it to the Paris final.
"I felt that it was the right time to express myself now in order to allow myself to concentrate fully on my preparation for the world championships," Perec told sports daily l'Equipe.
"For the time being, I'm returning to try and make it to the World Championships. Then we'll see," she said.
"I hope to be in the final in Paris, to be one of the eight girls to qualify and then we'll see," she added.
Perec, who also won Olympic gold in the 200 metres at Atlanta in 1996, had not been interviewed since her unexpected departure from Sydney.
In her absence, Australia's Cathy Freeman had won the 400 metres in Sydney and became a national heroine.
Perec said her experience at the 2000 Olympics had been a nightmare.
REAL NIGHTMARE
"The Olympics were a trauma, a real trauma. But I don't want to look back on it. I was badly shocked but now I think I've gone far enough in my mourning work to overcome regrets or bad feelings.
"I had never been through anything like that before. It was a real nightmare.
"I had been prepared for the Olympics, not to fight an entire nation," she added.
Since her gold medal in Sydney, Freeman has barely raced either. She took a year's break after the Olympics and was hampered by a thigh injury last year.
Perec said the competition was even tougher now in the 400 metres.
"Everybody says the discipline has not progressed since I left but I'm not so sure.
"On the contrary, there is a density of girls close to 49 seconds like never before -- Mexico's Ana Guevara ran in 49.16 last season, Jamaica's Lorraine Fenton, maybe the most dangerous, world champion Amy Mbacke Thiam of Senegal, Cathy Freeman of course and England's Katherine Merry," she said.
Perec also asked the French media not to harass her as she gears up for the World Championships that start on August 22 in the French capital.
"I hope for the French press to remember the way the Australian press protected Freeman in 2000," she said.
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