Australian swimming legend favored to light Olympic torch

Fraser, now 63, won the 100-meter freestyle in three separate Olympics, but in 1964 the Australian Athletic Committee accused her of disobeying its orders and banned her

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- It's all the talk in Sydney. With Friday's opening ceremonies to the 2000 Olympic Games fast approaching, everyone wants to know the unknown: Who will step forward and light Sydney's Olympic torch to signal the games' start?

Sydney's news media consider the main candidate to be an Australian so beloved she's known simply by her countrymen as "our Dawn" -- Olympic swimming great Dawn Fraser.

Fraser, who still lives in the house where she was born in 1937, accomplished so much in her brilliant career that last year the world's sportswriters named her the greatest female swimmer of the 20th century.

"Every time I look at my trophy, I go 'Oooohhhh,'" the 63-year-old, four-time gold medal winner told CNN's John Raedler. "I get a bit of a shiver. It's really a great honor."

Dawn Fraser dominated the world of swimming in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She was the first swimmer, male or female, to win the same event -- the 100-meter freestyle -- in three separate Olympics.

Her first gold medal came in the 1956 Melbourne (Australia) Olympics, where she also won gold in the freestyle relay event. Fraser followed with another gold in Rome in 1960.

And then came the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Fraser won her event, but the Australian Athletic Committee accused her of disobeying its orders -- specifically, joining other athletes in stealing a flag from Tokyo's Imperial palace. For the infraction, the committee banned Fraser from swimming for 10 years -- effectively ending her career.

"It wasn't deserved," Fraser said. "Because I didn't do the things that they said I'd done. And it was a terrible sort of taste in my mouth ... to have been retired when I wasn't ready."

A judge later overturned the ban, calling it "petty and vindictive."

Fraser set 27 individual world records during her career, the last a time of 58.9 seconds in the 100-meter freestyle -- in the 1964 Tokyo games -- that wasn't broken until 1972.

Fraser became a national icon, in part because of the ban, and many believe she will be the one to take the flame that has traveled from Greece and set Sydney's torch ablaze.

"If I'm that lucky person, well, it's going to be a wonderful moment," she said. "If I'm not, I'm still going to enjoy the opening ceremony of the 27th Olympiad."

CNN Correspondent John Raedler contributed to this report.

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