Dawn Fraser AC MBE (b. 1937), swimming champion, broke 39 world records, won four gold and four silver Olympic medals, and became the first woman to swim 100m freestyle in under a minute. She scored her first national championship title in the 220 yards freestyle in 1955. In early 1956 she won the national 110 and 220 yards freestyle titles, the latter in world record time. At the Melbourne Olympics, Fraser established another world record in winning the 100m freestyle and was part of the gold medal-winning 4 x 100m relay team. She won the 100m again in Rome in 1960 and in Tokyo in 1964, making her the first swimmer to win the same event at three consecutive Olympics. In 1999, Fraser was named World's Greatest Living Female Water Sports Champion by the International Olympic Committee; and Australian Female Athlete of the Century by the Sports Australia Hall of Fame. She later worked as a publican and served a term in the New South Wales Parliament as the independent member for Balmain.
Peter Brew-Bevan draws on his formal art background to give his photographs a very distinctive 'painterly' quality. Here he captured Fraser's larrikin personality; she was famously given a ten-year ban from competitive swimming after stealing an Olympic flag from the Japanese Emperor's palace in Toyko in 1964.
Purchased 2001
© Peter Brew-Bevan
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