Athletics: Austrian alchemists urge Silver Steffi to turn gold

It is not quite the same burden that Cathy Freeman carried into the Olympics in Australia 18 months ago, but Steffi Graf is under pressure to produce a winning home run in the European indoor championships in Austria's capital this weekend.

Like Freeman in the 400m in Sydney's Stadium Australia, the leading lady of Austrian sport carried the golden expectation of the host nation with her when she lined up for her 800m heat in the Ferry Dusika Hallenstadion yesterday. Graf's face stares down from all the posters around town advertising the Hallen Leichtathletik Europaischen Meisterschaft. On Monday she was presented with a pair of running spikes specially designed in the red and white of Austria, though yesterday she chose to race in a pair similar to the red, yellow and black shoes in which Freeman sped to victory in Sydney – the colours of the Aboriginal flag.

Not that Graf is running for a marginalised race or symbolically to unite a divided nation. She is running as a national icon – so popular that the Austrian skiing legend Hermann "Hermannator" Maier was travelling from Prague to Vienna last night to support her in the final this afternoon. She is also running to rid herself of the nickname she has acquired, "Silber Steffi" – Silver Steffi.

Though Graf struck gold in the 2000 European indoor championships in Ghent, she is best known in Austria for her silver-medal runs behind her Mozambiquan nemesis Maria Mutola in championships at global level. Having struggled for so long to make a name for herself as an athlete who happens to be a namesake of the retired German tennis great, Silver Steffi is determined to be the golden girl in Vienna.

She certainly had a glint in her powerful stride yesterday as she kicked to victory in 2min 1.40sec, roared on by a packed, patriotic crowd. "The positive thing is that everyone here is behind me," Graf said. "I know the pressure on me is tremendous but I think I'm mature enough to live up to the challenge." The 28-year-old is undoubtedly running fast enough to live up to the challenge, having clocked the second-fastest ever indoor 800m time by a woman, 1min 56.85sec, in Ghent three weeks ago. Graf, however, had to dig deep to get past Jolanda Ceplak on the final lap of that race, and the Slovenian was an impressive winner of the opening heat yesterday, clocking 1min 59.60sec. The pair share the same manager, Robert Wagner, but have developed a personal enmity that could produce a bruising final today; the perils of indoor middle-distance running were made painfully evident to Jenny Meadows yesterday, the Briton stepping off the track after having her heels clipped at the halfway stage in the final heat.

"I am prepared for every possibility," Graf said, and she has certainly prepared meticulously for the championships, under the guidance of her coach, Dr Helmut Stechemesser, a former East German middle-distance runner who heads Austria's leading sports-medicine clinic. She has made regular trips from her home in Volkermarkt, in the south-east of the country, to familiarise herself with the track at the Ferry Dusika Hallenstadion – even fitting in a final training session there on the way from the airport on Thursday night before collecting the European athlete of the year award at the Rathaus, Vienna's town hall.

Cathy Freeman, meanwhile, is back in action. She won a low-key 100m race last weekend and came second in a 200m yesterday. Her long-term target is the 800m at the Athens Olympics in 2004. Steffi Graf has the same goal too.