The weekend arrives earlier Down Under, so here are the World records set on January 10 and 11, John Konrads on a role with his sister:

The Konrad Kids

Ilsa Konrads was born in Riga, Latvia, her name Ilze Konrade, on 29 March 1944, less than half a year before her parents emigrated to Australia. Ilsa and her elder brother John (for archive, see January 8 below) would both represent Australia in the pool, and both would set pioneering paces in distance freestyle.

They were known as the Konrad Kids. Ilsa won Olympic silver alongside Dawn Fraser and mates in the 4x100m freestyle relay at the 1960 Games in Rome in an era when, as a distance ace, she had no race to turn to over 400m.

Her pantheon is graced by 13 World records, two of her 400 and 800 standards having been set on this day in 1958 and 1960. When her racing days were done, Ilsa, coached by Don Talbot, was the Australasian editor of Belle magazine. Talbot would end his career as one of the most revered coaches in swim history: in 2001 at the World Championships in Fukuoka, he became the first Australian coach to celebrate victory over a USA team at a global event for the first time since the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.

The Konrads, parents Jānis and Elza, their eldest daughter Eve, son John (also Jānis), Ilsa and the children's grandmother, left Latvia in August 1944, initially travelling to Germany after Latvia had lived through occupation by German forces in WWII, after which re-occupation took place as Soviet troops took control of the country.

The Konrads had their application to immigrate to the United States refused, and the family was relocated to a camp at Uranquinty. That had previously been a base for the Royal Australian Air Force, in rural western New South Wales.

It was there that Konrads taught his young children to swim, for fear of them drowning in the water all about the camp. Jānis worked in Sydney as a dentist, his wife also a qualified dentist who never practiced because of the demands of raising three kids. They attended Revesby Primary School, where one of the schoolteachers was Don Talbot, assistant coach at the Bankstown Swimming Pool, where the program was run by to coach Frank Guthrie, mentor to Olympic champions Lorraine Crapp, Sandra Morgan, John Monkton and Olympic medallists Jan Andrew and Gary Chapman.

The Konrad kids would cycle to training before sunrise for the first of their daily four hours in the pool at Bankstown. In 1958, Ilsa, still only 13, broke the 800m and 880 yards freestyle world records at the New South Wales championships, and then defeated Lorraine Crapp to become the first woman to race inside 5 minutes over 440y. She then defeated Crapp and Fraser at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff to win the 440y. In the two years leading up to the Rome 1960 Games, she set world records in the 400m and 440y, and the 1500m and 1650y freestyle.

At the Olympics, she swam the heats of the 100m and finished fourth in the 400m final. Her silver in the relay was claimed alongside Fraser, Crapp and Alva Colquhoun. Ilsa raced for Australia a last time at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, and claimed silver over 440y.

After her swimming career ended, Ilsa became a journalist, and went on to edit Belle from 1975 to 1979, and Vogue Living, from 1979 to 1984 and 1992 to 1999. Konrads also worked for the Sydney Morning Herald. For the past 26 years, Ilsa, now 81 and still living in Sydney has owned and largely run her own business.

She was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1987, and in 2000, she received an Australian Sports Medal for her achievements.

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