Just the [Archival] Facts PLC Sydney and the Olympics: Mina Wylie

This is the first of a series of articles about staff and students who have been members of Australian Olympic Teams.

Mina Wylie (1891-1984) was one of Australia’s first female Olympians. She and fellow Australian Fanny Durack swam in the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912, the first Olympics that allowed women to compete in swimming events. The Australians made their mark: Mina took the silver medal in the women’s 100m freestyle event while Fanny Durack took gold.

In 1930 Mina Wylie taught swimming at PLC Sydney. The swimming pool, completed in 1927 on the site of the present J.D. Oates Aquatic Institute, was popular and many girls learned swimming and life saving. Margaret Haynes (née Birk) was in Kindergarten in 1930 and remembers wearing “a one-piece black woollen costume and red cap shaped like a helmet with a chin strap. Miss Wylie stook on the side of the pool and seemed a large lady.”

The official opening of the pool, Olympic swimmer Mina Swimming demonstrations at Olympians Fanny This view of the pool was used February 1927 Wylie at Coogee, 1913 the new pool, Durack and Mina Wylie in the prospectus February 1927 Photo by Harold Cazneaux

Mina Wylie grew up in Coogee and swimming was always an important part of her life. Her father, Henry Wylie, built Wylie’s Baths in 1907 but before then, in the late 1890s, Mina was part of her family’s aquatic act. Her role was to swim with her hands and feet tied!

She set her first world record during the summer of 1910 when she swam the 100m freestyle in 1:15.8 at Rushcutters Bay Baths. She used the trudgeon stroke then but changed to the “new” crawl stroke the following year.

Mina Wylie and her friend Fanny Durack were championship swimmers at a time when women were not allowed to swim in the Olympic Games. However, when this changed in 1912 the two swimmers spent eight months persuading both the Australian government and the Amateur Swimming Association to allow them to compete in Stockholm. Their lobbying was successful, although they had to raise the funds for their fares themselves and they had to provide a chaperone. Once in the Swedish capital they discovered that the “pool” was built in part of Stockholm harbour and that the competitors swam without lane ropes.

World War I interrupted Mina Wylie’s Olympic career, but she continued to dominate women’s swimming in Australia. For 20 years she consecutively won at least one Australian national championship. Indeed, on three occasions (1911, 1922 and 1924) she won every event at the Australian national championships and set world records in freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke. By 1934 she had 115 titles to her credit. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1975.

Sources: PLC Sydney Archives, Sport Australia Hall of Fame, International Swimming Hall of Fame, Wikipedia