Mina Wylie

Mina Wylie was the first Australian woman to compete at the Olympic Games, when she swam the 100 metre freestyle at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. She won the silver medal in that event, trailing her teammate, Fanny Durack. Representing Australasia in 1912, the two did not have enough swimmers for the 4x100 metre freestyle relay event, although they offered to both swim two legs of the race, but the officials would not allow it.

Wylie and Durack grew up swimming in the pool that Mina’s father, Henry Wylie, built in the rocks in Coogee, New South Wales in 1907. Mina would eventually win 115 state and national titles between 1906 and 1934 in freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke. Along with Durack she made two swimming tours / exhibitions in the United States and one in Great Britain. She later taught swimming at Pymble Presbyterian Ladies’ College for 42 years.

Wylie never married, but lived most of her life in the family home in Coogee alongside her brother, Harry. She eventually moved into a Sydney nursing home where she died in 1984 at age 93. It was later discovered that she had kept an archive of her life and her swimming career and the 13 boxes of files kept in a metal chest made their way to author Grace Barnes, who in 2023 published Wylie’s biography, In Search of Mina Wylie.

In 1975 Wylie was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. A sculpture of Mina Wylie by Eileen Slarke stands at the entrance to Coogee’s Wylie’s Baths.