Elderly Olympic swimming great Dawn Fraser fought off an intruder who threatened to kill her by kicking him in the groin with her titanium knee, she has said.
The 72-year-old Australian swimming legend said she “lost it” when she confronted two youths who woke her when they entered her daughter’s home in Noosaville in Queensland state last Friday.
Fraser, who became a global sensation aged 19 when she shattered the world record to win gold in the 100m freestyle at the 1956 Olympics, said she snapped when one of the youths threatened her.
“Out came this guy who then grabbed me around the throat and said ‘I will kill you,’ and with that I grabbed him around the ear and hair and kneed him in the groin,” she told Channel Seven television late on Monday.
“I was threatened by the way he spoke to me and I’d never been spoken to like what he called me ... I think I lost it. I have got a titanium knee so it must have hurt him,” she said.
Fraser used her reconstructed knee in self-defense while vacationing at her daughter’s house.
Police said they had referred two youths to child protection services over the incident but said they were treating the investigation as a trespass incident, not a burglary, because no homes were broken into.
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