The women's 100 metre freestyle event at the 1964 Olympic Games

1964 Summer Olympics

The 1964 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. Tokyo had been awarded with the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this honor was subsequently passed to Helsinki because of Japan's...

 took place between October 12 and 13. This swimming

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

 event used freestyle swimming

Freestyle swimming

Freestyle is an unregulated swimming style used in swimming competitions according to the rules of FINA. The front crawl stroke is almost universally used during a freestyle race, as this style is generally the fastest...

, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events). Nearly all swimmers use the front crawl

Front crawl

The front crawl, forward crawl, or freestyle is a swimming stroke usually regarded as the fastest of the four front primary strokes. As such, the front crawl stroke is nearly universally used during a freestyle swimming competition, hence the synonymously used term "freestyle". It is one of two...

 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.

Medalists

Final

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
	Dawn Fraser Dawn Fraser Dawn Fraser AO, MBE is an Australian champion swimmer. She is one of only two swimmers to win the same Olympic event three times – in her case the 100 meters freestyle....		59.5	OR
	Sharon Stouder Sharon Stouder Sharon Stouder is an American swimmer. She was fifteen when she won three golden and one silver medals in the 1964 Summer Olympics....		59.9
	Kathy Ellis		1:00.8
4	Erica Terpstra Erica Terpstra Erica Georgine Terpstra is a retired Dutch freestyle swimmer, theosopher, sports journalist, state secretary and member of parliament. Between late 2003 and 18 May 2010 she was chairperson of the NOC*NSF...		1:01.8
5	Marion Lay		1:02.2
6	Csilla Madarász-Bajnogel-Dobai		1:02.4
7	Ann-Christine Hagberg		1:02.5
8	Lyn Bell Lyn Bell Lynette Bell , known after marriage as Lynette Chipchase, was an Australian freestyle swimmer of the 1960s, who won the silver medal in the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics....		1:02.7

Key: OR = Olympic record