TOKYO, Japan, October 9. THIS weekend will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable swimming moments in Olympic history, when Dawn Fraser won the 100 free for a third consecutive time.
Fraser’s swim at the 1964 Olympics marked the first time anyone had won the same individual event more than twice at an Olympics. She would stand alone in that club until 1996, when Krisztina Egerszegi won the 200 backstroke for a third time at the Atlanta Olympics. Michael Phelps joined the club in 2012 when he won the 200 individual medley and 100 butterfly for the third time.
Fraser was 27 years old when she won the 100 free in Tokyo, a very advanced age for an elite swimmer at a time when the International Olympic Committee did not allow athletes to take money for sponsorships. That made training difficult for Fraser, but she showed her might in winning over American Sharon Stouder by four tenths of a second. Fraser was used to winning by such a close margin. At the 1956 Games, she beat teammate Lorraine Crapp by four hundredths to take her first 100 free gold.
Because the International Olympic Committee does not allow its videos to be embedded, we invite you to click the link below to watch Fraser’s history-making race. Note that during the medal ceremony, the Australian national anthem is “God Save the Queen.” As a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, that song was Australia’s anthem until “Advance Australia Fair” was adopted in 1974.
I suspect the 1956 margin over Crapp would have been measured in tenths, rather than hundredths.