Free condoms for athletes in the Olympic village? Not at the 1956 Games in Melbourne, where the men's and women's sections were separated by a fence said to have been one-and-a-quarter inches higher than the world pole-vault record.And the only gate between them was guarded around the clock by a sentry, recall the three surviving members of the South African women's 4x100m freestyle relay team that won bronze.Sue Leuner (née Roberts), Mo Ford (Abernethy), Jenny Lourens (Myburgh) and Natalie "Toy" Myburgh, who died in 2014, were just teenagers when they went to the Games 60 years ago.They trained at the indoor Hillbrow pool, the only heated facility in the country at the time, under coach Cecil Colwyn.story_article_left1Sue and Mo were regulars there, but Jenny, the youngest of the four, came up from Cape Town, having trained at the Sea Point pavilion, where "I had to find my lane to swim through the crowds of people".She stayed with the Roberts family in Johannesburg, travelling to training on the back of Sue's scooter."We used to pass where there was a black dog that came storming out into the road. I thought this dog was going to get me. Every morning," Jenny said in a joint interview over tea in Johannesburg."Shame, Jenny, I should have changed the route," responded Sue. "I thought you were just screaming with pleasure."Toy, the star freestyler, joined the squad from the East Rand.Of the eight swimmers in the Olympic team, seven trained under Colwyn for the build-up to Melbourne, yet the administrators opted to send another coach to the Games."A lovely grandfather," said Sue, now 77. "By the time we swam we were not nearly as fit as when we left.""We were flat," added Mo, also 77. I remember standing on the block looking around and it wasn't even full. And when they called my name out, South Africa, they booed "Was [he] actually a coach?" asked Jenny, 75.Mo recounted how the new coach struggled to see the far side of the pool at training sessions in Melbourne. "Sue and I would swim to the end of the pool and talk to the American guys in the lane next to us [when] we were supposed to be doing 10 lengths," she said.Before leaving South Africa, the team spent two weeks at the police training camp at Voortrekkerhoogte in Pretoria learning to march for the opening ceremony.Their plane stopped in Mauritius, the Cocos Islands, Darwin and finally Melbourne, where Jenny suffered a misfortune in her official shoes, her first pair of heels.Stepping out the aircraft door, she lost her balance and fell down the staircase. "I grazed my shins and everything went flying and there was an article [about how] 'I fell for Australia'."In the village they were next to the Australian swimmers, including legend-to-be Dawn Fraser, a frequent suntanner. "[That was the] first time we saw bikinis," said Mo, adding that on the trip home, in Sydney, Toy bought one."Toy went off to Bondi Beach - she was in bed for two days [afterwards] peeling skin off her stomach."Fans frequently gathered around the village, throwing notebooks and pens over the fence for autographs. They also packed in to watch training sessions - there were far fewer spectators for the actual competition."The atmosphere was disappointing because I remember all those crowds when we were training," said Sue. "I remember standing on the block looking around and it wasn't even full."And when they called my name out, South Africa, they booed."South Africa was sent into Olympic isolation after the next Games in Rome.Jenny missed her individual 400m freestyle race because of severe stomach cramps.story_article_left2"I think I was eating the wrong food. I was eating ice cream and banana," she said, and then turned to Sue: "You taught me [to eat that].""Sorry," replied Sue.But the four were in fine form for the relay.Jenny went in first, followed by Sue and then Mo.When Toy dived in, she was in fourth place, just behind the German swimmer. Toy hauled in the German and finished 0.4sec in front of her to clinch the medal."We did a press conference then the four of us walked home arm in arm," recalled Mo. "We sang along the street there, all four of us together."A friendship forged in bronze...