It is the lasting image of the Sydney Olympic Games. Today that little kid from Canberra has risen to become an NBA champion and is now on the verge of becoming a four-time Olympian.

Sally Fitzgibbons was in the stands that night Freeman brought a nation to a standstill in 2000. She was in the top row of the Stadium Australia grandstand, up so high "I walked all the way up and could touch the roof".

Now she will add another chapter to her legacy when she arrives in Tokyo for surfing's debut at the Olympic Games.

Freeman's legacy has endured long after Sydney's flame went out. Now the prospect of the Olympic Games being held in Brisbane can inspire a new generation of athletes.

Brisbane has emerged as the International Olympic Committee's preferred bidder to host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Now the journey begins for those emerging athletes to carve out their own legacy and create their own Freeman moment.

Part of that journey could be ignited in our own backyard.

Canberra is thousands of kilometres away from the city slated to host the 2032 Games. But the prospect of the event returning to Australian soil could fast-track plans to reignite the AIS's ageing 65-hectare site, with chief executive Peter Conde lauding the Brisbane bid as "brilliant for Australians".

Conde is desperate to see the AIS re-emerge as a world leader and the prospect of the Olympics returning to Australia could aid those plans.

"We continue to engage with the government about the rejuvenation of the AIS campus and those discussions are ongoing. They're ultimately decisions the government will make," Conde said.

"There is a range of demands on the government at the moment with the pandemic situation, but we do have a strong case with the government.

"We're in a fortunate situation right now that there has been very considerable work to modernise the AIS and how we operate sports.

"There has been work on how we cooperate across the system with the network of sporting institutes across the country, and our Games partners, to ensure we've got a really world-leading system.

"We're not there yet, but this announcement about 2032 will give us greater momentum."

Sport Australia and the AIS are considering a wide range of options to redevelop the site which would stand on a much smaller footprint than its current 65 hectares.

The AIS campus has become a home for cutting-edge sports science as opposed to an athlete hub, with some sports scrapping their Canberra-based scholarship programs in recent years.

A proposed land sale could be required to fund a potential upgrade to the facility.

One option for a potential AIS redesign includes selling major assets, including Canberra Stadium, the AIS Arena - which has shut its doors - and surrounding land to the ACT government for future residential and commercial development.

Selling this land is a chance for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to be pumped into the sporting sector quickly. The Bruce site could be prime real estate for apartment developments - it's near a hospital, the city centre, the Belconnen town centre.

More than half of the AIS's facilities are deemed "not fit for purpose" in the Infrastructure Australia priority list for 2021. Upgrades could include a world-class sports technology hub, plus centres of excellence for women's sport and Paralympics.

The federal government is buying into the AIS's vision, last year committing an extra $54 million over two years on top of the institute's $145m investment in sport per year, some of which is already tailored towards pathway development.

Sydney 2000 marked the peak of a seven-year journey from the day the Games were awarded to the city. Brisbane is 11 years away.

"The kids that will be marching in the opening ceremony in Brisbane, some of them are just out of primary school," de Castella said.

"It's going to be really important for the AIS to really rapidly put in place the talent identification, nurturing, and the high performance skill coaching and development.

"It certainly was like that leading into 2000. Unfortunately, a lot of it has been fragmented and we've lost a lot of the expertise out of the AIS.

"It really needs to have that helicopter view of the strategic priorities that are necessary, and ensure the funds don't get gobbled up in administration and executive salaries, and resources and support go to the pointy end."

Australia's returns at the Olympics have declined at every Games since the nation's peak in 2000, which garnered 58 medals. Rio 2016 brought 29.

Conde says the mission to re-establish the AIS as a world leader "requires advances in all sorts of areas".

That starts with performance pathways, developing coaches, training environments, and giving athletes access to world-leading sports science.

"It requires a very holistic approach to ensure we continue to strive to be the best and sustainably so in the near-future," Conde said.

"We really don't want to wait [11 years], we've got a much greater sense of urgency than that, but to really perform at our very best in 2032, we want to be getting close to our optimum four years ahead of that.

"We've made big strides over the past few years and we want to make bigger strides on the way to Paris. The runway we have is certainly an advantage."