Born: September 4, 1937, Balmain, near Sydney,
New South Wales, Australia
Dawn Fraser is an Australian swimmer, who was the first swimmer to win a gold medal in the same event at three consecutive Olympic Games. Dawn Lorraine Fraser was born in Adelaide and began to be coached in swimming by Australian Harry Gallagher at the age of 14. During her career she won eight medals at the Olympics (four gold and four silver) and six gold medals at the Commonwealth Games. She also set 27 individual world records. Fraser won three of her Olympic gold medals in the 100-metre freestyle event: at the 1956 games in Melbourne, Australia, where she also won a gold medal in the freestyle relay event; at the 1960 games in Rome; and at the 1964 games in Tokyo, where she set her last world record with a time of 58.9 seconds, a record which was not broken until 1972. Fraser also won 23 Australian titles between 1956 and 1964, when she retired after the Australian Athletic Committee had imposed a ten-year ban on her swimming for a prank at the Tokyo Olympics when she and a group of other athletes stole a flag from the Imperial palace. She later became a publican in Balmain, New South Wales, Australia, and represented that district in the New South Wales Parliament from 1988 to 1991.
