Ilsa Konrads - Career

Career

Born in Riga, Latvia, Konrads emigrated with her parents Janis and Elza, grandmother, elder sister Eve, and elder brother John in August 1944, initially to Germany. This came after Latvia's occupation by German troops during the Second World War and then re-occupation by Soviet troops. Living in Germany until 1949, their application to immigrate to the United States was refused on account of the large size of the family. They were relocated to a camp at Uranquinty, which was previously a base for the Royal Australian Air Force, in rural western New South Wales. There her father Janis taught the children to swim, fearing that they could drown in the many watering holes and dams in the camp.

Janis secured a job in Sydney as a dentist, and the family settled first in Pennant Hills and then Bankstown. Elza enrolled in the University of Sydney's dentistry program, as her qualification from the University of Riga was not recognized, but withdrew due to the demands of raising three children. Ilsa and her siblings attended Revesby Primary School, where one of the schoolteachers was Don Talbot. Talbot was an assistant to Frank Guthrie at the Bankstown Swimming Pool.

Every day, Ilsa and her elder brother John cycled to the Bankstown pool before sunrise, for a two-hour training session, before returning home for breakfast and then attending school. After school, they would cycle back to the pool and repeat the training regimen. In 1958, the results of Talbot's regime training began to materialize, when at the age of 13, she broke the 800 m and 880 yd freestyle world records at the New South Wales championships, and then defeated Lorraine Crapp to become the first woman to complete 440 yd under five minutes. She then defeated Crapp and Dawn Fraser at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff to win the 440 yd freestyle event. In the two years preceding the 1960 Summer Olympics, she set world records in the 440 yd, 400 m, 1500 m and 1650 yd events.

At the Olympics, she suffered from nerves and was eliminated in the heats of the 100 m freestyle, and managed fourth in the 400 m freestyle, some 12s slower than her personal best. She collected a silver in the 4×100 m freestyle relay, along with Fraser, Crapp and Alva Colquhuon. Her last competition was at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, where she claimed silver in the 440 yd event.

After her retirement from competitive swimming, Konrads went into journalism, and eventually became the editor of Belle, 1975–1979, a leading Australian interior design magazine, and Vogue Living, 1979–1984 and 1992–1999. Konrads also worked for the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper and since 1999 has been running her own business.