Article courtesy of the Courier Mail.
OLYMPIC swimming legend Dawn Fraser has thrown her support behind mining magnate Gina Rinehart amid the sponsorship scandal that’s left Netball Australia on the brink of financial disaster.
Rinehart withdrew $15m of funding from Netball Australia on Saturday after pushback from players to wearing the logo of her mining company Hancock Prospecting.
Now Fraser has hit out at the playing group, declaring she can’t believe what they are doing, while praising Rinehart for her financial backing of numerous minor or less marketable sports in Australia.
“I appreciate the fact that I’ve been associated with Mrs Rinehart. I really can’t understand the netballer that pulled the plug,” Fraser told 4BC Drive.
Fraser, a four-time gold medallist and one of the country’s most celebrated athletes, also said she feared that Australia’s richest person would now stop sponsoring sport.
The Diamonds group’s opposition to wearing a Hancock Prospecting logo on their jerseys centres on concerns from the team’s only Indigenous player Donnell Wallam about comments by Rinehart’s father Lang Hancock.
“She’s not her father. I’d hate to be in her position and being slammed over the fact that my father did some things wrong,” Fraser said.
