An Olympic Great, Could Dawn Fraser Be Considered The Greatest Female Swimmer of All-Time?

Earlier this year, SwimmingStats posted a review on Instagram of the 10 most decorated female swimmers in Olympic history across individual events. That means no relay medals included, just individual medals prioritized with gold, ahead of silver, then bronze. As you scroll down the list of legends headed by the only current swimmer of the 10, distance great Katie Ledecky, you find in equal eighth place Australian living legend Dawn Fraser.

 

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Fraser was born in September 1937 and competed in her first Olympics as a 19-year-old in 1956. It would be 1972 before any of the other members of the elite group of women on this top 10 list raced at the Olympics – making Dawn a woman truly ahead of her time.

Fraser competed in three Olympics; Melbourne ’56, Rome ’60 and Tokyo ’64. In winning the gold medal in the 100 freestyle in Tokyo, it meant Fraser became the first swimmer to win the same event at three successive Olympics. After her win in Melbourne, her world record remained untouched by anyone else for more than 15 years as she lowered her mark an astonishing nine times.

In 1962 she achieved a long-held ambition to be the first woman to break the one-minute barrier in the 100 freestyle, well before tumble turns and fast suits.

Her career was cruelly cut short by the Australian Swimming Union after Tokyo when they somewhat arbitrarily issued her a 10-year ban, later reduced to four years, for her part with two teammates in souveniring a flag from the front of the Japanese Emperor’s Imperial Palace.

Although she was initially arrested, the police decided to let her go when they discovered the identity of the thief. The next day she famously received flowers with a box containing a flag and a letter from the Emperor forgiving her for the indiscretion. Dawn carried the flag for the Australian team at the closing ceremony that night with his forgiveness, but not that of her home Federation.

Looking back at her legacy raised two questions in my mind. How might this great swimmer have performed had she competed in a fourth Olympic Games? Moreover, if we consider the event opportunities open to swimmers today, what sort of medal tally might she realistically have brought home?

I was privileged to speak with Dawn about her thoughts on these questions. I advanced to her that she must have been ‘pissed off’ at being blocked by officialdom from the opportunity to go on to Mexico. Her reply was, “That’s putting it mildly, I was bloody pissed off!” In today’s sporting environment, a good sports lawyer would have sorted this matter out in no time, but despite enormous public outcry and political support, the Australian Swimming Union would not relent.

What I sensed during our conversation was Dawn has been true to her character all her life.  She is open and joyous reflecting on her childhood as the youngest sibling of three brothers and four sisters in a working-class family.

She spoke of playing cricket and football with her older brothers. “I was a bit of a tomboy and was always getting into mischief; it was in my character from the start. It was my brother Donny that started encouraging me to swim as it was good for my asthma, and as I got older a good long swim allowed me to let off steam.”

However, she recounts at the age of 12 a swimming official told her she would never swim for Australia on account of her working-class background. Dawn feels, with good reason, it was the starting point for a very rebellious attitude towards swimming officials and administrators.

Throughout her Olympic career, there were only two freestyle events available to women, the 100 and the 400 freestyle. It was not until the 1968 Mexico Olympics that the 200 distance was introduced. And as for the 50 freestyle, it was a long stretch until Seoul in 1988.

“I never liked the 400 freestyle but I really didn’t have much choice. There were only two freestyle events at the Olympics and my coach Harry Gallagher said I had to swim it,” Dawn chuckled.

For an event she didn’t like, she made the final in all three Olympics, with a silver medal in ’56 behind teammate and world record-holder Lorraine Crapp, fifth in ’60 and just 0.3 off bronze in ’64. Even today her voice still resonates that her coach Harry Gallagher, “was the boss”, her guiding light, he kept her on the straight and narrow, well most of the time anyway!

Coach Gallagher died in 2021 at the age of 96 and they remained very close until his passing.

So my question posed to her was how she might have performed had the 200 and 50 freestyle been available to race at the Olympic Games in her era.

“I loved the 200 freestyle; the challenge of planning a strategy for your race with your coach, and it was short enough to come home strong in that last lap,” she said.

We spoke about the way Australian freestyler Mollie O’Callaghan came home over the top of Olympic Champion Ariarne Titmus in this event at the World Championships trials last year in Melbourne, which led to her world record performance in Fukuoka. “That’s what I mean, her timing of that last 50, amazing swim,” Dawn replied.

Looking at her history in this event, Dawn posted her first world record in 1956, although her compatriot Crapp lowered the record twice in that Olympic year.

Two years later, Dawn regained the world record, breaking it twice in 1958 and finally again in 1960. The record stood until 1966, when six individual American swimmers lowered the mark over the next two years, culminating in American teen sensation Debbie Meyer, who added the 200 to the world record, to the 400 and 800 distances prior to Mexico City.

As for the 50 dash, as it was called back in those days. Dawn was known for her immense power even as a teenager. She led at the turn in her three Olympic gold medal swims in the 100 freestyle, so from her perspective she was always in control of the pace in the first lap, and called on her strength when challenged in the second.

I asked fellow octogenarian and legendary Australian Olympic distance coach John Rodgers (JR) how Dawn would have gone in the 50 freestyle. John had seen her race many times at the height of her career and was very straightforward in his reply. “She would have smashed it mate, she was so strong, and no one would have got near her.”

There were no tumble turns back then, you touched with two hands and had to stay on the surface, so the one lap would have been perfect for a powerful swimmer like Dawn,” he added.

As one might expect, Dawn modestly would not be drawn to offer a potential medal tally in this hypothetical world. So from this writer’s theoretical perspective then, I would have pulled Fraser from the 400 freestyle in all her Olympic events, focussing on the 50-100-200 freestyle treble at her first three Olympics, then dropping back to the 50-100 freestyle at her final Olympics in Mexico as a 31-year-old.

Capturing a medal in all three distances over three Olympics and two more in her fourth Olympics would have resulted in a total of eleven individual medals. As a comparison, Katie Ledecky has seven individual medals; six gold medals, and one silver medal from three Olympics.

I believe Fraser would have been the favorite for the gold in the 50 freestyle at all four Olympics.

In the 100 freestyle, she already had three gold medals in the bag. Due to the impact of the high altitude in Mexico City, times were notably slower across most of the swimming events. Fraser’s world record of 58.90 and Olympic Record 59.50 remained intact, with the times posted by the three medallists from the USA: Henne 1:00.0, Pedersen 1:00.3, and Gustavson 1:00.3 just failing to break the minute. Surely, Fraser would have had a big chance to be among the medals again?

Finally to the 200 freestyle and it would have been a close battle for gold in Melbourne. Fraser broke Crapp’s world record in winning the 100 freestyle. However, Crapp was also the world record-holder in the 200 and 400, having in reality beaten Fraser by almost eight seconds in the 400 freestyle final. In Rome and Tokyo, Dawn was the reigning world record holder in 200 and would have been the favorite for gold.

Just one final observation to reflect upon Dawn Fraser’s mental toughness in her career.

After her father’s death in December of 1961, Dawn and her mother grew close. Following a successful Australian Championships in February 1964, the two looked forward to Tokyo; it would have been her mother’s first overseas trip.

Shortly after the trials, Dawn was the driver of a car that was involved in an accident that killed her mother. It also left Fraser with chipped vertebrae requiring two months in a neck brace, less than eight months out from the Olympics.

I asked her if she thought it would have been easier to cope with the sadness and injury at this time or any other time in her career, if she had access to the level of medical and psychological support staff available for current-day elite athletes. “No, I had my coach (Harry Gallagher), I didn’t need anyone else,” she replied quickly.

Despite her many run-ins with swimming powers-that-be, FRASER was named Australian of the Year in 1964. In 1999, she was named Female Athlete of the Century by the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and awarded World Athlete of the Century at the World Sports Awards. In the same year, the IOC declared her the Greatest Living Female Water Sports Champion.

I would commend swimming aficionados to read her autobiography: Dawn: One Hell of a Life. First published in 2001 and readily available online on the second-hand market.