Jodie Henry OAM

Jodie Henry OAM stood poolside ahead of the 100m freestyle final at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Her arch-rival, Inge de Bruijn of the Netherlands, looked across and tried to stare her down. But rather than be intimidated by the defending champion she laughed and waved at friends. 

That in itself was a win. And it set up one of the great weeks in Australian swimming history when Henry swam three event for three gold medals and three world records. The prestigious 100m freestyle, the 4x100m freestyle relay, and the 4x100m medley relay. 

She was the fastest female swimmer in the world. The first Australian women to win the 100m sprint since Dawn Fraser's hat-trick in 1956-60-64 and now one of just four alongside Fanny Durack in 1912, Fraser and Emma McKeon in Tokyo last year. 

In the freestyle relay she swam the fastest 100m every by a woman in the anchor leg, with an extraordinary split of 52.95 seconds as she humbled the gretest female relay swimmer in history, America's Jenny Thompson. 

In the medley relay she swam the anchor leg after Petria Thomas had turned the race with a magnificent butterfly leg, closing out her program to join Thomas as the first Australian women since Shane Gould in Munich in 1972 to win three gold medals at a single Olympics.

It is inconceivable, then, to think that four years before Athens she would become ill with the fright at the thought of comeptitive swimming. So bad was the affliction it cost her the chance of swimming at the Sydney Olympics. 

So to answer the mental challenge of de Bruin and then to swin so magnificently was the moent for the shy girl who had learned to swim at age three but didnt' swim competitively until 14 in 1997. 

When she hung up the goggles after injury halted her 2008 Olympic hopes she had also won five world championship gold medals, two Pan Pac gold medals, and four Commonwealth Games gold medals. And 21 major international medals in total.

She was named Queensland Sports Star of the Year 2004 after winning the Junior Sports Star Award in 2022 - the first person to complete the double before Jason Day and Ash Barty did likewise. 

Inducted to the Queensland Sport Hall of Fame in 2012, she is married to two-time Brisbane Lions AFL premiership player Tim Notting and a mother of three, and content with the relative anonymity of retirement. But she will always be a champion, and from this point on she will always be a Queensland Sport Hall of Fame Legend...JODIE HENRY OAM.