Dawn Fraser

Australia’s Dawn Fraser is considered the greatest female sprint swimmer ever. She won eight Olympic medals, with four gold and four silver medals at the Games of 1956, 1960 and 1964, including three successive golds in the 100 metres freestyle, a record for any Olympic swimming event (since equalled by Hungary’s Krisztina Egerszegi). She was denied the opportunity of adding to her medal total when she received a lengthy suspension following misbehavior at the 1964 Games. She set 27 individual and 12 relay world records. On 27 October 1962 in Melbourne, she recorded a time of 59.9 seconds for the 100 metre freestyle, which made her the first woman to swim the sprint distance in under one minute. She was wildly popular in Australia, where a daffodil, a rose, and an orchid were named after her, and the Elkington Park Baths in Sydney were later renamed the Dawn Fraser Pool. In 1988 Fraser was selected as Australia’s greatest female athlete. In that same year she was elected to the New South Wales Parliament where she represented the seat of Balmain until 1991.