DAWN FRASER Dawn Fraser grew up in the suburb of Balmain, a dockside industrial suburb in Sydney. She was the youngest of eight children, and suffered from anaemia, asthma and other chest complications. She learnt to swim at the age of five and two years later, Dawn Fraser swam for a professional body. Around 1950, Fraser joined the Drummoyne Women’s Amateur Swimming Club, where she caused a commotion by beating the brilliant young swimmer, Lorraine …showed first 75 words of 263 total…

…showed last 75 words of 263 total…but Fraser beat her in the Australian 110-yard event, breaking the longest standing world record, set 20 years before. Later the same week she cracked the world record for the 200m and 220 yards. In the Melbourne Games Fraser was victorious in the 100m. In 1960 a few months before the Rome Olympics, Dawn Fraser beat world record holder Ilsa Konrads, in the 440 yards. She went to the Olympics in Rome won the 100m freestyle and two relays.