Meg Harris

Amassing five Olympic medals before her 23rd birthday, Meg Harris has been a key and under the radar Dolphins team member.

Making her senior Dolphins squad debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in 2021, she quickly picked up an Olympic title, bronze in the women's 4x200m freestyle relay, four long course world championship gold medals, two short course world titles, became a Commonwealth Games champion and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in the space of a few years.

Meg claimed her first gold in Tokyo as a member of the Australian 4x100m freestyle quartet. Joining with three of the greats of Australian sprinting, Cate and Bronte Campbell and Emma McKeon, Meg unleashed a 53.09sec second leg to help the Dolphins not only claim gold in 3.29.69 but also the world record.

After the Olympics, she moved to Adelaide where she linked up with noted Marion coach Peter Bishop. Her onslaught continued at the 2022 Budapest World Championships where she linked up with other members of the rising generation of “green and gold” female sprint freestylers, Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack and Madi Wilson to power Australia to the 4x100m freestyle relay gold.

Then she and Mollie joined forces with Kyle Chalmers and Jack Cartwright to claim victory in the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay, again in world record time (3.19.38). Her own split was a sizzling 52.25sec.

Also in Budapest she collected the first solo medal of her international career, the bronze in the 50m freestyle. Silver in the mixed medley relay provided her fourth medal of the meet.

After a short break she was off to Birmingham for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. She secured the silver behind teammate Emma McKeon in the 50m freestyle and could again rely on the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay for another title.

And still she wasn’t finished with 2022, returning to Australia to win two gold and three silver at the world short course championships in Melbourne, all of them in relays.

The triumphs kept coming in 2023, when Meg was again part of the Australian team that won gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay in the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, smashing their own world record in the final. Teaming up with Mollie, Shayna and Emma, Meg swam a 52.29 split as the team put together an astonishing 3:27.96, shattering the record set in Tokyo.

After a stint in South Australia, Queenslander Meg is now back in her home state, training with Rackley Swim Team in Brisbane under coach Damien Jones.

Coming into the 2024 Olympic year, Meg won the 50m freestyle title at the 2024 Australian championships on the Gold Coast and finished second in the 100m. In what has been described as the best-credentialed sprint field ever assembled in Australia, Meg finished third in the 100m freestyle final at the Olympic trials in Brisbane, behind Mollie and Shayna, booking her ticket to Paris as a relay swimmer.

Meg had another outstanding Olympic campaign in Paris. On the final night of events she claimed her first individual Olympic medal, silver in the women's 50m from lane two (23.97s), only behind long-time Swedish champion Sarah Sjostrom (23.71s).

“It’s my first time under 24 seconds. It took me a while to find out and line up all the times,” Meg said. “I think it was shock… I was just sitting there for a second and had no idea what was going on.

“I saw Shayna (Jack) across the other side of the pool smiling at me and that’s when it hit me. I got pretty emotional.”

She also featured in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay gold medal performance, in Olympic record time, alongside Shayna, Emma and Mollie. It became the fourth-straight Olympics Australia has taken gold from the event.

Another medal came, silver, in the women's 4x100m medley relay where Meg was rewarded for her contribution as a heat swimmer.

Meg is partially deaf but, like Cindy-Lu Fitzpatrick before her, she continues to inspire young children to follow their dreams.