The man who taught Dawn Fraser more than swimming

Dawn Fraser has indelible memories of the first time she met Harry Gallagher, her mentor, coach and friend until his death on Wednesday.

Dawn Fraser training with coach Harry Gallagher in Adelaide in 1961

Dawn Fraser has indelible memories of the first time she met Harry Gallagher, her mentor, coach and friend for the 73 years until his death on Wednesday on the Gold Coast. The absurdity of that meeting still makes her chuckle.

She was 11 at the time, which makes the year 1948, maybe early 1949, and training at the Elkington Park Baths at Balmain, a NSW Heritage listed landmark that these days goes by another name – the Dawn Fraser Pool. Her cousin used to coach her at that stage, but when the nearby Drummoyne Pool was closed for refurbishment and the coach there brought his squad over to train at the famous tidal, saltwater pool, the Elkington lanes suddenly became uncomfortably crowded.

“I’d climbed the 120-odd stairs to get to my bike after training and I noticed this guy waiting for me,” Fraser recounted to The Australian on Thursday. “He called out to me and told me to get a light for my bike. I’d been annoyed at him because his group had taken over our pool so I may have told him what he could do with his suggestion.”

Fraser set off to ride home but very quickly got the sense that she was being followed. This stranger was tailing her in his car. Rising to the challenge, she ducked and dived down side streets and laneways and was congratulating herself on having thrown off her stalker when suddenly he pulled up outside her home. Clearly he had done his homework and knew her address. “He waited outside for a while but then he came to the door and asked to speak to my parents.”

And so it was that Harry Gallagher entered the life of Australia’s most revered swimmer. Four Olympic gold medals and 41 world records might be the quantifiable outcome of their partnership but Fraser, who drove from her current home on the Sunshine Coast to visit Gallagher only hours before his death, counts the benefits in ways that can’t be worn around her neck or come with an embossed certificate attesting to her swimming brilliance.

“What can you say about a man who not only taught me swimming but taught me about life,” she asked. “He never expected anything of me other than the fact that I would give him my best.”

He would be with Fraser every step of the way throughout her swimming career, the highs and the lows, until she was banned at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. First day at training with her new coach, Gallagher said there was a boy he wanted her to race and Fraser, typically, looked him up and down and decided immediately she could beat him.

Still, something about the boy must have concerned her because she fudged the start and opened up sufficient lead to eventually dead-heat with him. That must have been something of a blow to her ego because it didn’t matter who Fraser raced in those days, male or female, the outcome was almost always the same. Still, over time she consoled herself with the fact that, like her, the boy would go in to win two gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. His name was Jon Henricks. Now in his 80s, he remains a firm friend.

Gallagher’s coaching CV is almost without equal in a country that has produced some of the greatest coaches ever to prowl a pool deck. His swimmers won 14 Olympic golds. They broke 53 world records, including the 100m freestyle record, which had been the property of Holland’s Willy den Ouden for 22 years. When the Dutchwoman first broke it, her time was 66sec. By the time Fraser had finished with it, the record stood at 58.9sec. Not only had she become the first woman to swim 100m in under a minute, she was the first to go under the 59sec barrier.

These days, every Australian swimmer who is regarded as a gold medal candidate can be assured of having his or her coach accompany them to the Olympics, but it was a different matter when Gallagher was coaching. So it was that Mike Wenden won the 100-200m freestyle double at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 while under Gallagher’s care, though it was Vic Arneil, a former Army commando, who set him on the path to greatness.

Australian swimming tends to treasure its legends but it let itself down badly in the case of Gallagher. Though he lived to the age of 96, Gallagher was made a life member of Swimming Australia only last October, along with relatively modern-day champions Susie O’Neill and Chris Fydler. This, for a person inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1984.

Gallagher felt the snub deeply. In July 2018, he wrote to this author expressing his disappointment that he had been largely ignored by Australia. “I’m ancient,” he wrote. “But I still have a few clues. I live on the Gold Coast (Queensland is home to virtually all the major swimming squads) but not one swimmer or coach has ever approached me for a “How did you do it? Or “What can I do to improve?”

Thankfully, Swimming Australia recognised him in time, though it was a close-run race.

No details are yet available on his funeral arrangements.