Whitehead stood on the roof, cut the rope and, as they scooped the giant flag through the sliding door of the van, the Italian mounted police arrived. They galloped after the van as it disappeared into the Rome evening.

“That’s correct,” Fraser said as I checked the details with her. “We got away with it.”

The flag was so big, Whitehead was forced to buy a separate suitcase in Rome to transport it home.

“He was shitting himself going through customs in case they opened it,” son John said.

Back in Sydney, Keith, unable to find a place at home to display it, handed it to his mate “Gelignite Jack”, the rally car driver, wrestler and powerboat champion, who hung it in his garage. He leased the garage to Jeff “Fishcake” Stevens, a Bondi identity, who occasionally used the flag as sun protection in his barbecue area, draping it over his Hills Hoist.

Following Keith’s premature death in 1980, the flag remained with Stevens, despite occasional entreaties from the Whitehead family for its return.

Then, midyear 2019, John Whitehead, while watching a State of Origin match at the Beach Road Hotel, Bondi, spied Stevens across the bar. Whitehead was with David Hynes, the Baseball Australia president and a 1996 Atlanta Olympian.

The story was retold and Hynes contacted former four-time water polo Olympian Peter Montgomery. They resolved to involve the AOC. Enter James Edwards.

“It’s been like chipping away at an iceberg,” Edwards, the AOC’s head of community engagement, said. “But Jeff finally, sort-of, agreed over the last two years that the flag could and should be handed over.

“Except on every call there seemed to be a lot of confusion on where the flag actually was, and it was probably lost. COVID then created another year of radio silence … then mid-November, Jeff returned a call with the news his brother-in-law had located the flag in a farmhouse south of Hobart.

“The flag was coming up the coast on a crayfish trawler. Closer, but nobody dared get ahead of themselves.

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“Then, in late November, Jeff arranged a meeting with Johnny Whitehead and a handover was observed, 61 years in the making. And so, the Olympic flag is now, finally, back in the hands of its rightful owner - the Whitehead family (as long as nobody tells the Italian government).”

Fraser, who has her own Olympic flag from 1964 as well as a signed note from the former emperor of Japan, also holds fond memories of the earlier flag heist and fellow triple Olympian Keith Whitehead.

“John rang me last year,” she said softly. “He asked did I want the flag? I said, ‘No, that’s your dad’s. I’ve got mine.’ ”

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