John Konrads

John Konrads won the 1500-metre freestyle gold medal and two bronze medals at the Rome Olympics in 1960.

During the golden age of Australian swimming in the late 1950s and early 1960s, John and his younger sister Ilsa rewrote the swimming world record books.

The Konrads family fled Latvia in the closing stages of the Second World War and migrated to Australia in 1949 as refugees.

John and Ilsa embraced swimming and, with the help of coach Don Talbot, set dozens of world records.

John, pictured in 2011 with the medals he won in Rome, hopes his Olympic objects at the National Museum will, ‘offer inspiration to the youth of today ... to show that a migrant kid can become a world beater’.