"I think Ian can be successful in London," Fraser told insidethegames while attending the Laureus World Sports Awards in Abu Dhabi. "He retired too early, even though he had had 10 years of competitive swimming because he started at the age of 14.

"Ian has certainly got the possibility of winning a medal at London 2012. Whether it will be gold or not, who knows. I'd like to predict he will beat [Michael] Phelps over 100 and 200 metres, but that is really going to take something."

Fraser spoke to Thorpe regularly in her role as mentor to the Australian swimming team, a position she held from 1988 to the year of the Sydney Olympics, 2000.

"Ian's got a long road ahead of him," she added. "But I think it's clear he's put a lot of thought into this. He is a very intelligent young man and I think he's probably missed competing. He's still only 28.

"But I can understand why he retired.

"I think he had had enough of all the pressure and the press attention he was getting. He had photographers outside his house taking pictures of him as he got out of the shower, that sort of thing. That's not nice.

"His personal life was being exploited in the press, and there was all kinds of speculation about whether he was gay or not – I don't think he is, not that it matters either way."

Fraser, who has a daughter, Dawn Lorraine, from an earlier marriage, came out as a bisexual several years ago.

"It was at a time in my life when I needed that love, and you can't find it when you are a high profile sportsperson," she commented. "I came out and said what I said, and that was that. I have been left alone since by the media."

Fraser may have understood some of the reasons why Thorpe ended his competitive career, but she was not surprised by the comeback, which the swimmer announced officially on February 2 this year.



"No," she said. "I had a bit of clue about it last year, actually, because I was recording something for TV at a pool in Sydney and one of the lifeguards told me that Thorpey had been training regularly there but he was not doing anything now because there were cameras around.

"So at that point I guessed he might be making a comeback.

"Although London 2012 has clearly been a draw for him, I think he would have returned wherever the Games were because it is in his heart to do it. But as the Games are in England it will make things easier for him as he won't need to have an interpreter with him all the time.

"I think Ian will do both the 100 and 200m freestyle. If I was still advising him I would say the best swim he could do would be the 200, because then you have more time to use tactics and experience. So I hope he concentrates more on that distance."

When Fraser won her third successive Olympic 100m freestyle title at the 1964 Tokyo Games at the age of 27, she was almost twice as old as the silver medallist.

"I remember when I was established in swimming I realised I would have to do more than my younger competitors. So if my coach would say swim eight miles, I would swim 10. I needed to have done something extra because they had younger bodies than me.

"Next time I see Ian I will talk to him about the things I did to try and stay ahead of the youngsters, although he will still only be 29 next year and I would have been 31 at the 1968 Mexico Games if I had been able to go. I believe I still could have done it – I could have won a fourth gold.

"But I was forcibly retired by the swimming authorities."

As Fraser points out, many people assume that the 10-year ban imposed upon her by the ASU in 1964 - they thought better of it early in 1968, but by then it was too late for Fraser to prepare properly for the impending Games - was a result of her infamous jape in Tokyo when she stole the Olympic flag from its flagpole outside Emperor Hirohito's palace and was arrested, although later released without charge. (The Emperor subsequently let her keep the flag as a souvenir of the Games.)

"Everyone thinks I got banned because I stole the flag," Fraser said. "It wasn't that. It was because I marched in the Opening Ceremony at the Tokyo Games when I had been asked not to. I felt able to do it – and I also think that if you get the opportunity to represent your country, you should do so."

Ironically, Fraser (pictured) played a key part in the Olympic Opening Ceremony 36 years later when she was one of the bearers of the Olympic torch inside the stadium in her home city of Sydney.

Fraser's ban was also prompted by the offence taken by the official kit sponsors when she chose to wear an older, more comfortable swimming costume during the opening heats of the 100m freestyle.

But there is an abiding sense that the ultra conservative swimming authorities were also making Fraser pay for her light-hearted attitude.

Asked if she felt there were any kindred spirits in swimming today, her first response was to say no. But she swiftly qualified that position.

"I'd say they are not allowed to express it because it's all regimens now," she reflected.

After the trials the team is announced, they then go off and have a private party and some of them get into trouble. But now it's all patched up, whereas in my day we had no control over media or people talking behind our backs, things like that.

"Nowadays it's all regimented. Press releases are put out, you get what you read.  Whereas" - she gives a chuckle - "it was different in my day.

"Swimming is more professional now, there's a lot more at stake, there's money involved. There was no money when I was swimming, but it wasn't a do or die.

"There was a gold medal at the end of it, but there wasn't a quarter of a million dollars, or 35,000  dollars coming from the Australian Olympic Committee to help you train."

Fraser may have been something of a larrikin, as the Australians have it, but she was impressively disciplined and determined about her swimming from an early age as she grew up in the working class Sydney suburb of Balmain.

"Winning my first Olympic gold medal was very important to me because coming from a working class family and suburb, my father had given me an ultimatum when I wanted to go away from home to train. If I hadn't improved in six months I had to come home.

"So my first Olympics was the one I always remember because my mum and dad saw me swim for the first time. Gold medals you never forget, but your first one is always the one."

The other achievement that has a special place in the heart of the woman who finished her career unbeaten with eight Olympic medals - four  gold, four silver - and two Commonwealth golds, was that of becoming the first woman to break 60 seconds for the 100m freestyle, which she managed in 1962 before lowering the mark to 58.9 two years later, a record that was only bettered in 1972.

"My next moment was when I broke the magic minute," she reflected. "They are my two swims I always respect."

To get to that position of pre-eminence, however, this broad-shouldered daughter of Balmain had to dedicate herself totally to her ambition after moving down to South Australia with her swimming coach and living in a room above a swimming pool.

"I worked three jobs a week to survive," she said. "I had a job in a department store, I was a coffee house waitress, and I pulled petrol at the weekends.

"I would get up at 3.30 in the morning and would be in the pool from 4.15 until 8.00. It wasn't a heated pool - it was bloody cold! But even to this day I don't like swimming in heated pools. I got used to the cold. I don't even like hot showers now - I have them lukewarm at most.

"Today, swimmers train 12 months a year, and in my day we trained for just over half the year. But kids now are doing about 20km per day, and I reckon I was doing around 25km per day back then.

"After the morning swim I would grab a shower and get out to the department store. The manager there allowed me to get a job in the stores, so sometimes I was able to get a bit of sleep! At lunchtimes I would swim for another 45 minutes. When I got off work I would swim again from 4.00 until 6.30.

"On Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening I would work at the coffee house. And on Saturdays and Sundays I would work in the day at the petrol station."

In later years, the same determination was employed to influence the ASU to allow swimmers to earn money for what they did.

"I was a pioneer for the sport," Fraser said. "I got rid of amateur status in swimming for our country. Yes, I was a rebel, but I was a rebel with a worthwhile cause.

"I was strong. I was honest."

And people love her for it.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames