During her career Denise held every Australian record for freestyle and backstroke.
Lois Quarrell, in her Advertiser column in 1947 described Denise Norton this way: “She is brilliant and is the greatest South Australian swimmer of all time.” Denise was 14 at the time.
Her father, Clifford Norton, was an Adelaide optometrist who owned and raced a yacht. He insisted that his daughter be a competent swimmer if she was to join the family on the boat.
So, she began swimming as a five-year-old on the Glenelg Beach where her father taught her a variety of strokes. That was in 1938.
Freestyle, earlier known as the Australian Crawl, would become her favourite stroke.
At 15, she placed second in the Swim Through Adelaide on the River Torrens. Adelaide’s cool weather plus an absence of heated pools led her to spend time in Melbourne, where pools were a constant 25degrees, in preparation for the 1950
Empire Games in NZ.
She also trained in Sydney under coach Forbes Carlisle who used scientific methods in his trainings. At 17, she won an Empire Games team gold medal in the 4×110 yards relay and an individual bronze in the 440 freestyle.
Then at the 1952 nationals, Denise Norton beat the renowned Victorian Judy Joy Davies in the 440 yards freestyle and was selected for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
At the Games, she was roomed with the legendary Marjorie Jackson and Victorian sprinter Winsome Cripps.
To get to the Olympics, she was required to raise 750 pounds ($1500), so The News launched a public appeal to help fundraise that amount.
The young South Australian was clearly a woman of resolve, complaining in her letters to her father that the pre-Olympic training facilities were poor – only two lanes for two hours once per day for the entire Australian swim team. She desired to train twice a day.
In the 440-freestyle event, Denise came 4 th in her heat, then 7 th in the semifinal.
At age 19, she was ranked in the top 15 in the world and then retired. During her career she held every Australian record for freestyle and backstroke.
Norton retired soon after the Olympics but decades later returned to swimming and competed in Masters’ events, setting multiple records.
She also married a Finnish man and remarkably, later competed for Finland in the world sailing championships in 1979.
Denise Norton is a member of the Swimming SA Hall of Fame.
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