Passages: Joan Harrison, South African Olympic Gold Medalist, 89
Joan Harrison, who won the women’s 100-meter backstroke at the 1952 Olympics for South Africa, has died on May 20 at age 89.
Harrison made history in Helsinki by winning the first South African gold medal in the 100 back. It held as the only gold medal for a South African woman in Olympic swimming competition until Penny Heyns in 1996. That medal was lost and feared stolen in 2023, though the family eventually recovered it. Harrison’s death was confirmed by the Swimming History of Southern Africa page on Facebook last week.
Harrison, who went by her married name Joan Breetzke late in life, was born in East London, South Africa. She came from an athletic family, her mother a swimmer and her father a rugby player.
She became a national champion at age 13. She was 14 in 1950 when she won gold in the 440-yard freestyle and bronze in the 110 free at the British Empire Games (now known as the Commonwealth Games) in Auckland. Her time was 13 seconds quicker than the winner of the 1938 event, the previous incarnation around the event’s World War II interruption.
The British Empire Games were her first international competition. Her second was the Helsinki games, where she went 1:14.3 to edge the Netherlands’ Geertje Wielema by two tenths for gold.
Harrison continued her career after her Olympic debut, winning gold in the 110-yard back and 440-yard freestyle relay, plus silver in the medley relay (then 330 yards for three strokes) and bronze in the 110 free at the 1954 British Empire Games in Vancouver. She retired at the age of 17 before the 1956 Olympics, though she did return to national competition that year. She also played field hockey from 1954 on. Harrison was inducted to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1982.