Dawn Fraser biography

 Dawn Fraser biography

Dawn Fraser, (born September 4, 1937, Balmain, close to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), Australian swimmer, the primary lady swimmer to win gold medals in three consecutive Olympic Games (1956, 1960, 1964). From 1956 to 1964 she broke the ladies’s world file for the 100-metre freestyle race 9 successive occasions. Her mark of 58.9 seconds, established on February 29, 1964, at North Sydney, was unbroken till January 8, 1972, when Shane Gould, a fellow Australian, achieved 58.5 seconds at Sydney.

At the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Fraser captured gold medals within the 100-metre freestyle occasion and within the 4 × 100-metre freestyle relay race. She repeated her triumph within the 100-metre freestyle on the 1960 and 1964 Games, in Rome and Tokyo respectively, and added silver medals within the 400-metre freestyle (1956), the 4 × 100-metre freestyle relay (1960, 1964), and the 4 × 100-metre medley relay (1960). Her performances within the 1964 Olympics have been particularly noteworthy as a result of she had been injured significantly in an car accident in March of that 12 months.

In addition to her unusually long-lived world file for 100 metres, she set world requirements (all damaged by the early Nineteen Seventies) in freestyle swimming at 5 different distances as much as 220 yards. Conflicts with Australian swimming officers marred the top of her profession.

Fraser later represented her native Balmain within the parliament of New South Wales, in 1988–91. Her autobiographies have been Below the Surface (1965; additionally printed as Gold Medal Girl) and Dawn: One Hell of a Life (2001).