Dawn Fraser was the youngest of eight siblings. She moved to Adelaide with coach Harry Gallagher when she was 17.
It was October 13, 1964, and the Olympic Games 100m freestyle finalists in the gold medal race are in the Ready Room, waiting to be called out onto the pool deck.
The room is dense with silent anxiety.
Some of the eight sit with their head down, towels over their heads, and others have eyes closed. In the room are two powerful USA swimmers, four Europeans, and two Aussies including Lyn Bell.
Dawn Fraser has been here before. Afterall she is the defending Olympic titleholder, two times over, but she also knew this one would be the toughest.
Afterall, she was 27 and significantly older than the rest of the field, in some cases 10 years older.
She needed to establish mental ascendancy and decides this is the moment.
Dawn Fraser stands up, walks across the room, opens the door to the pool deck, closes it, turns back to the room and says loudly, “Well, whoever is going to win tonight will have to swim a world record. And the way, I’m feeling, I reckon it’s going to be me!”
And so it was. Dawn Fraser – gold medal, her third in the blue-ribbon event.
Nine years before this day, Dawn had moved to Adelaide with coach Harry Gallagher. She was 17 and brimming with talent.
South Australia was thrilled to have her. Two years before that, at just 15, she broke the world record for the 100m freestyle.
The youngest of eight children from a working-class Sydney family, Dawn was noticed by Harry Gallagher at the local beach-side baths as a young teenager.
She soon developed a prodigious appetite for swimming and for winning.
Dawn Fraser held 39 records and won eight Olympic medals including four gold. In 1962, she became the first woman to swim the 100m freestyle in under one minute – a time of 58.9 seconds. That record stood for eight years.
Dawn left Adelaide in 1962, when coach Harry Gallagher moved to Melbourne to manage a sports centre.
Ever the independent rebel, at the Tokyo Olympics, Fraser caused tension with sponsors and the Australian Swimming Union by marching in the opening ceremony against their advice and wearing older bathers which she found more comfortable than the sponsor-supplied costume.
She was also accused of stealing an Olympic flag from a flagpole outside Emperor Hirohita’s Palace. She was arrested but released without charge.
In the end she was given the flag as a souvenir.
Dawn Fraser is an Australian icon and has been awarded an AC and MBE. She is an inductee in the FINA Swimming Hall of Fame, the Swimming Australia’s Hall of Fame, the NSW Hall of Champions and Swimming SA’s Hall of Fame.
