Swimming at the 1956 Summer Olympics – Women's 100 metre freestyle
| Women's 100 metre freestyle at the Games of the XVI Olympiad
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| Venue | Swimming and Diving Stadium | ||||||||||||
| Date | 29 November (heats) 30 November (semifinals) 1 December (final) |
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| Competitors | 35 from 16 nations | ||||||||||||
| Winning time | 1:02.0 (WR) | ||||||||||||
| Medalists | |||||||||||||
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Dawn Fraser |
 Australia
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Lorraine Crapp |
Australia
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Faith Leech |
Australia
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The women's 100 metre freestyle event at the 1956 Olympic Games took place from November 29 to December 1. This swimming event used freestyle swimming, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events). Nearly all swimmers use the front crawl or a variant of that stroke. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of two lengths of the pool.
Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were:
The following records were established during the competition:
Key: WR = World record
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