Up to seven Australian swimmers struck down by Covid including gold medal winning freestyler and silver star

Australian legend Dawn Fraser has revealed to the Matty and the Missie podcast that up to seven Aussie swimmers competed in Paris while battling Covid with at least two winning medals.

Up to seven members of Australia’s Olympic swim team battled covid during the Paris Games and had to be placed in isolation.

The Dolphins struggled with Covid from the start of the Games, with breaststroker Zac Stubblety-Cook revealing he won silver four days after contracting Covid.

Freestyler Lani Pallister won relay gold just a few days after she pulled out of the 1500m freestyle with covid and rookie Ella Ramsay was another confirmed covid casualty withdrawing from her 200m medley final.

The identity of the other four swimmers has not been revealed.

Olympic great Dawn Fraser has revealed on the Matty & the Missile podcast there were more cases kept quiet by team officials.

Fraser hailed the Australian swim team’s success despite their Covid troubles.

“It has been absolutely fantastic you know, because half of our swimmers got covid and it wasn’t known to the media,” Fraser said.

“They got covid the first couple of days they were in the village and we had to put seven swimmers in hotels to keep them away from it.

“I really take my hat off to some of those young people because they really got 1000 per cent. Because I knew some of them had covid and it was spreading around the village like that. “They had to move some of our swimmers out and get rid of the paper bed ... just crazy.”

Swim officials said athletes were never quarantined in external hotels, but did move into isolation within the village and not all cases occurred during Olympic competition as there had been some illness in pre-camp.

Zac Stubblety-Cook shook off a bout of Covid to take silver in the 200m breaststroke. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Covid became an issue prior to the opening ceremony when five women’s water polo players tested positive while Stubblety-Cook said his world was rocked when he tested positive on day one of competition.

“I started to get a lot of fatigue,” Stubblety-Cook said.

“We had good triage and treatment for it, so we were able to get onto it quickly, and I still had a bit of a cough and shortness of breath and a bit of fatigue.

“But we were lucky, we were able to adapt and manage the load … we got the best performance and it makes the whole year and the result feel special, knowing all those ups and downs.”

AOC chief medical officer Dr Carolyn Broderick said of the 84 PCR tests conducted at the village about half were positive for some form of respiratory illness.

“Anyone who virtually sneezes more than once comes and presents we can test them,” Dr Broderick said.

“One of the great things has been the selfless attitude of a lot of athletes that come having sneezed twice and not really worried about themselves, but thinking they’re sharing a room with someone who’s competing in the next few days, and they want to minimise the risk for their teammate.

Lani Pallister (left) with her gold medal winning relay team Picture: Adam Head

“It’s enabled us to isolate these cases and not have spread throughout our team.”

Chef de mission Anna Meares praised the swim team for how they overcame their health challenges.

“That’s the challenging part about the Games, right? You come here and you do all the preparation and planning, and sometimes health can be the thing that can tip it one way or the other,” she said.

“At the end of the day, if you get sick, you’ve still got to go out there.”

Despite the illnesses Meares said she did not support the idea of teams staying in hotels rather than an Olympic village where they can mingle with athletes from every sport.

“I think it’s really important to be able to salvage that at the Olympic Games.”