Despite reaching the pinnacle of his sport at 17 by winning gold in the 1500m freestyle at the 1960 Rome Olympics, John Konrads never truly realised his immense talent. In this revealing interview with one of Australia’s most fascinating athletes, Michael Romei looks at the nerves, self-doubt and the desperate desire for fame and success that limited Konrads’ reign in the pool and sparked a destructive need to prove himself in the corporate world for the next 30 years.

Sporting a youthfully trim frame that is only highlighted by his smock of white hair, John Konrads veers around the deck and props himself atop the highest step overlooking the pool at the Cook + Phillip Park Aquatic Centre in Sydney. The 1960 Olympic Champion for the 1500m freestyle is used to racing, and today he appears to be in peak form, slapping his knees to signal he is ready. With a textbook smile and a range of mischievous anecdotes at his disposal, he glides through the initial stages of the interview as if he were in water, reconstructing his sporting triumphs in as vivid colour as the murals that line the surrounding walls of the Centre.

It is a masterful lesson in marketing from a man who followed up his sporting career by sweeping to the top of the corporate ladder. Eventually, however, Konrads’ speech stroke shortens. Reeled in by a barrage of ‘what ifs’, he falters when asked if he believes he achieved everything he could have in his career. The smile sags and Konrads begins to furiously scratch the back of his head. He takes his time before responding.

“Ah… no,” admits the 67-year-old, his face strained. “Well, the big thing that sticks out is my two bronze medals. The second bronze medal was in the 4x200m freestyle relay, where the Americans and the Japanese beat us. While we weren’t necessarily the favourites for that race, [at the time] I was the 200m world record holder and John Devitt was the 100m world record holder, so we had reasonable expectancies to win. But [in the 400m freestyle] all I had to do was go 2.9 seconds worse than my personal best to get a gold.”

“Even though 99 per cent of the time I’m at ease with it, when down times come or when depression sets in, they’re the sort of things that you cover. And you know, it’s hard to really square away with major… yeah, failures.”

The final word hangs heavily in the chlorinated air as Konrads gazes down towards the pool. It’s not often that a sportsperson will use the word failure when reflecting on events in their career. Frustration? Sure. Disappointment? All part of the game. But failure is taboo, inconsistent with the image we have come to expect from our sporting gods.

As though suddenly aware of this unwritten sports code, Konrads breaks the silence by adding “But I’m not a great believer in ‘what ifs’, because the past is the past”. The effect is somewhat unconvincing; the hollow sounds of a rote-learned phrase that has been repeated a few too many times. But the therapeutic motivation behind it is understandable; no matter how people spin it, the truth is that despite reaching the pinnacle of his sport with an Olympic gold medal – an accomplishment few people can boast – Konrads never truly realised his immense talent.

There was no armful of gold medals to accompany Konrads’ wealth of world records. Nor was he to cut across generations, his name inspiring instant recognition like Grant Hackett, Kieran Perkins and Murray Rose – fellow winners of the Olympic event that has come to be regarded as ‘Australia’s Race’. His was a sporting career that ascended quickly and promised to span several years. However, with nerves and self-doubt dragging him down on one side and the corruptive trappings of success clasping to him on the other, Konrads’ time at the top lasted only a few short years.

Konrads is aware of this – he confesses that ego is one of his greatest flaws and has spent a lifetime comparing himself to others, both in and out of the pool. In the corporate career that followed his sporting pursuits, he would spend decades attempting to emulate and exceed the accomplishments and thrills he experienced in the pool. But it is because of his inner turmoil and the struggles that he faced – including a lifetime battle with depression – that the tortured Konrads is one of the most fascinating athletes in Australian sporting history.

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For a man who would go on to hold every freestyle world record from 200m to 1500m, Konrads’ first contact with water was a turbulent one. Arriving from Latvia in 1949 with his parents, younger sister, Ilsa, and his grandmother, Konrads’ early years were marked by instability, the family being shifted to different migrant hostels across NSW. It was while living at one of these hostels just outside Newcastle that an eight-year-old Konrads was able to visit the beach and, tempted into the water by the blazing sun and crashing waves, quickly found himself swept out into the surf.

“It’s interesting in many ways, because I didn’t panic much,” he recalls with a smile. “I was wading around, and as it does the swell comes in and the swell goes out, and it came in over my head. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I thought, “Well, uphill is towards the beach”. So I decided that I would walk along the bottom of the ocean back to the beach.

“Lucky for me soon after that some adult nearby grabbed my arm and pulled me to safety!”

While for many this might have prompted a fear of water, Konrads was mesmerised. Shortly after this the family was moved to the Uranquinty migrant hostel in Wagga Wagga, which was one of the few hostels to boast a swimming pool. It was in these barren surrounds that Konrads and his sister taught themselves to swim, racing the other children and getting their first taste of victory.

What they didn’t realise at the time was that this unremarkable pool was to be one of the three lucky coincidences that Konrads believes led to his swimming career. The second emerged in 1951 when the family moved to a house in Pennant Hills, only to be confronted with a murky pool that hosted a colony of frogs. It was after a great deal of scrubbing that Konrads was able to continue his love affair with water, but this ended abruptly when after a year the family moved to Bankstown in Sydney’s west.

This proved to be the final – and most important – coincidence. It was at Revesby Public School that Konrads would meet the man who recognised his talent and grew determined to make him a champion.

“I used to love racing kids across the pool,” Konrads says. “So when I went to primary school I asked whether there were any school races, and there weren’t – swimming was only for people at high school. But then one kid piped up and he said to go speak to Mr Talbot in class 4C.”

This 19-year-old teacher was, of course, Don Talbot – the coaching legend who would go on to train a bevy of Olympic champions and become head coach of the Australian and Canadian swim teams. Talbot had only recently been put in charge of training kids at the Bankstown pool and after learning of Konrads’ interest he sprinted him down to the pool on the back of a motorbike to perform a time trial.

“And the rest was really a snowball [effect],” Konrads says simply.

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The facilities swimmers had at their disposal during the 1950s were a stark contrast to the sleekly designed and temperature-controlled temples that pop up today. The trying conditions would push many a young swimmer to breaking point – an effective system for testing a person’s dedication to becoming a champion.

“It was a zoo!” Konrads recalls when asked about training at Bankstown pool. “First of all, we didn’t have lane space, so the reason we swam early in the morning was because that was when the public weren’t around. After school, and particularly during holiday periods, we literally had to plough our way through [the pool]. We just grabbed the centre two lanes and played waterpolo with kids’ heads as we swam over them, until they finally kept out of the way!”

“We didn’t have goggles in those days so the chlorine got into our eyes, the water was choppy and it was unheated – I reckon the water at Bankstown in a time like July, where the air temperature would be three to four degrees, would have been 14 or 15 degrees. And we didn’t have any fat on us!”

But Konrads was eager to prove himself, and in those early years his determination never wavered.

“In hindsight, they were terrible conditions,” he says. “But I loved it, because it was a question of relativity. No one had it easy. A lot of kids trained in sea pools and pools that were worse. The Balmain Baths, now known as the Dawn Fraser pool, I gotta tell you, in the days of industry… We used to joke that there were little brown logs floating in the water, and it was okay for us freestylers, because we breathe in on the side, but we felt sorry for the breaststrokers!”

By his side for every stroke was Ilsa, who joined Talbot’s squad shortly after Konrads and proved to be just as talented as her brother. It was a teaming that would eventually result in them being referred to by the fawning media as the ‘Konrads twins’, and while Konrads is reluctant to say whether he thinks he would have had the same drive without his sister chasing his feet, it was without question a remarkable relationship.

“She was a fantastic companion,” Konrads says. “You know, she was my younger sister, but she was a bit of a tomboy so she was easy to get along with. It was nice to have somebody with you on the bus in the morning, or coming home in the evening, and share a bag of chips with.”

It was not long before Konrads began to swim times that suggested he would be a major player on the world stage, and his rise was one of the most extraordinary in the history of the sport. He had started as a migrant child splashing around in a backyard pool in 1951, but by the time he was 14 and the 1956 Melbourne Olympics were approaching, swimming officials were eager to have him on the Australian team. While in the end Konrads – who was tagged as an emergency swimmer – did not have a competitive swim, he was able to experience life as an elite athlete and this further inflamed his desire to succeed. However, it was in this brave new world that the smooth-talking and handsome Konrads would reveal his playboy side – one that would cause so many problems later on.

“They used to call me Young Lochinvar,” Konrads chuckles, “I’d flirt with all of the girls. I think it was fun and very controlled and controllable. At that point.”

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It was another two years before Konrads made his assault on the record books. The next big event on the swimming calendar – which was yet to hold world championships or Pan Pacs – was to be the 1958 Empire Games (now Commonwealth Games) in Cardiff in the United Kingdom. The 15-year-old Konrads’ road to the Games began at the NSW Championships in January where, brimming with confidence after seeing Ilsa break two world records four days earlier, he went on an eight-day rampage and collected six world records, including the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle records.

Over the next two months Konrads would break eight more records, including the 1500m world record at the Australian Championships. An overwhelming favourite going into the Games, he performed confidently and took home three gold medals for the 400m, 1500m and the 4x200m relay. With Ilsa also scoring gold in the 400m, the Australian media went wild for the Konrads kids, plastering their faces on the covers of Women’s Weekly and Women’s Day and tracking their every move. Talbot would later say that the attention afforded to Konrads and his sister was almost twice as much as Ian Thorpe in his heyday.

“Well, maybe not twice as much,” Konrads says after some thought. “You can’t forget that the media was smaller in those days. TV had only just started. Who! magazines and the muck-breaking newspapers weren’t around. But there was radio and so on. So I think relatively speaking it’s probably correct.”

It was a level of adoration the self-confessed “egotistical” Konrads eventually became seduced by, and would even miss in his later years. But he admits that in the beginning it was often a struggle to deal with.

“At first you’re flattered, and your ego is stroked, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. But after a while it became a bit of a nuisance, because in those days my family didn’t have a car. I had to take public transport to school, and if I wanted to take a girl out we’d have to go on the train, and people would just stare. It was embarrassing!”

“Then if you wanted to go to the pub for a beer, people would ask you what you were doing there, say you should be off training. You’d just want to be left alone.”

But despite the media intrusion into his life, Konrads’ trajectory continued upwards. In 1959 he broke another six world records, so that in the lead up to the 1960 Rome Olympics he was regarded as a near certainty for not just one, but several gold medals. However, after much deliberation Konrads and Talbot decided to pass on the individual 100m and 200m events, and instead concentrate on the 400m, 1500m and 4x200m relay.

His first event was the 400m, in which Konrads qualified for the final behind his then-bitter rival and defending champion Murray Rose. It was a race Konrads understandably still replays in his head: leading at the halfway mark, he succumbed to the pressure of racing and abandoned his plan, coming third in a time that was almost six seconds adrift from his world record.

Konrads believes he was crippled by the significance of the occasion and the expectations of those around him. In an age when sports psychology wasn’t widely practiced, he allowed his habit for negative thoughts to consume him, and was unable to cast them from his mind.

“I slept really badly the first few nights, had jet lag, and I began to think to myself, ‘what if I lose?’” he recalls.

“We weren’t aware of sports psychology in those days, but Don was sensational, and I guess a natural psychologist. After that race I was down in the dumps, and Don isn’t usually a pretty face when you don’t do your personal best. I was the runaway favourite and just screwed up. But after I went and saw him in the stands, he just made me put that behind me immediately and started talking about the 1500m in a few days time.”

“What he did is what’s now called visualisation. You a) don’t dwell on failure; and b) visualise the future, and a successful future. I found that out 20 years later.”

When it came time for the 1500m, Konrads was calm and stuck to his race plan – despite former world record holder, American George Breen, attacking from the outset. He would go on to win in an Olympic Record time of 17 minutes and 19.6 seconds, grabbing the gold he was destined for.

“It was the win I wanted most, because of Australia’s history in the event,” Konrads reveals. “The Olympic gold medal is the high of all highs, but I don’t think anyone has really clear memories about winning. It’s just an environment of everything that you’ve always strived for, and you can’t put it into words. It’s pride, joy, relief. Actually, a lot of it is relief – thank Christ it’s over!”

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Rome (and its aftermath) proved to be the high point of Konrads’ swimming career. He returned home to a heroes’ welcome, and was quickly enjoying a decadent lifestyle, attending scores of parties, drinking often and playing the naughty boy. He even hosted a short-lived Channel 9 teen music show, The John Konrads Show.

“It felt good being around rich and famous people,” Konrads says. “But there was a downside to that, and that was I started to think, I want to be like them. Why aren’t I like them and why aren’t I rich enough and why haven’t I got a Porsche. So I started to compare myself to others.”

But those around him felt it was time for a change. A year after his return Konrads accepted a scholarship to train and study at the University of Southern California (USC). It was a move that had been preceded by Murray Rose and John Hendricks, and it was agreed by his parents and Talbot that in the age of amateur sport this was the best way for Konrads to capitalise on his swimming achievements. Once there, however, the glut continued and his performances declined rapidly.

“When I got there it was party time,” Konrads reflects. “That’s when things went out of control, and I plateaued in my own performances. California girls and Coor’s beer got to me. But it was a rich kids’ school, and I wasn’t really ever comfortable there.”

“And it wasn’t the party time, there were other elements too. The training was different. The man in charge there, a world famous coach called Peter Daland, wasn’t a mentor like Don, who was like a big brother. Peter was a team leader. That’s how the US college system works, and why the Americans are so good at relays. You were swimming in a team sport, whereas at home I was swimming for myself.”

“In one way I suppose if I’d stayed in Australia my career would have been more successful.”

With Konrads struggling to find form, his scholarship was cut in half. Eventually, with his feelings of homesickness reaching their zenith, Konrads hopped on a plane home to prepare for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics with Talbot. Though he improved dramatically in the next six months, he only managed to qualify for the 4x200m relay. After swimming only in the heats, Konrads’ swimming career – during which he set a total of 26 world records – came to an unremarkable end at 21 years of age.

Konrads joined his sister in retirement. She had beaten him there after missing qualification for Tokyo. Ilsa would later say that while they were both happy to be done with swimming, her brother missed the adulation.

“Yeah, I was egotistical,” Konrads concedes. “And it wasn’t good ego, it was bad ego. There’s no such thing as good ego. But Ilsa and I, neither of us really liked competing. We set all our world records at times when we didn’t have any people breathing down our necks. And we’ve lost races because somebody was almost or just as good as us.”

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Konrads would not swim another lap for 17 years. In the time that followed, the race for excellence took place in the corporate world, as Konrads pursued the wealth and status that he had witnessed – and even enjoyed – in his glory years. After moving to Paris to work as the director of swimming at a flash country club, Konrads met his wife Mikki and was soon after introduced to the vice-president of cosmetics giant L’Oréal. In a snowball effect that mirrored his swimming career, Konrads joined the company in 1972 and a year later found himself shipped back to Australia to become the managing director of the company’s Australian and New Zealand division, whose headquarters were based in Melbourne.

Having jumped on the fast track to success, Konrads admits this was probably a case of too much, too soon.

“I never worked my way up through the ranks,” he sighs, exhibiting the same critical thought pattern that hindered his performances in the pool. “I was 30 years old and I was MD of a major company. I think I lacked the strength of character and the experience of having had some tough calls in business.”

But it was a teaming that was to last 13 years, and allowed Konrads to realise the many goals he had set himself. With a luxurious home in Brighton, three children in private schools and status as a darling of the social sect, Konrads was the embodiment of everything he had craved while at USC.

“At USC there had been a sort of ‘everybody can succeed’ type mentality. Things were measured in material terms. What kind of car do you drive? Where do you live? How much money do you earn?”

“So I just started setting goals for myself. By the time I retire, all my kids will be university graduates, I’ll have a nice fat superannuation, and so on. In hindsight, the setting of unachievable objectives is a sure way to depression.”

As he would learn almost 30 years later, Konrads suffered from a form of depression known as Bipolar II Disorder, one that is characterised by extreme highs and lows. It was a condition he largely managed to avoid during his swimming years, the highs of which were – for the most part – sufficient to avert the dark thoughts that would render him a mere shadow of his usually exuberant self. But in the years following his arrival in Melbourne, as the thrills of his success began to wear off and the desperate need to do better increased, Konrads periods of lows increased.

“I used to call my lows the springtime blues, because they seemed to set in around September,” Konrads says. “I tried to contain [the feelings] as much as I could, but in the end I felt I couldn’t cope with the pressures of business. I’d go and sit in my car for hours or walk around the block.”

Konrads’ strength had always been his ability to charm people; he excelled in PR and was adored by those around him. Yet when it came to the bottom line and controlling costs, he struggled. With time the company began to suffer, and so too Konrads’ confidence. He started to drink heavily, his feelings of hopelessness increased, and eventually the company suggested it was time for fresh blood.

Despite this setback, Konrads would continue striving for, and achieving, success in the corporate world – even if he wasn’t always convinced of it. He became marketing manager of the now-defunct Australian airline Ansett, then the head of the Melbourne Major Events Company. In the late 1990s, as the Sydney Olympics approached, he moved to Sydney and co-leased the Cook + Phillip Park Aquatic Centre, where he continues to work dealing with marketing. However, it was on a trip to Europe in 2001 that the condition that he’d be grappling with, alone, for so long became too much.

“I was in Amsterdam when it hit me the hardest,” Konrads recalls. “Depression often starts with anxiety, and I was anxious about the future – that I didn’t have enough money to retire. I was again comparing myself to other people; I used to be the hero of my wife’s family, MD of L’Oréal, Olympic champion, etc.”

“And in 2001, one of the my wife’s family members was director of marketing on NEC Europe, and the black sheep of the family was one of the biggest commercial real estate owners in Amsterdam. And I thought, gee, life has passed me by. Everybody has overtaken me. I’m going downhill, everybody else is going uphill. It began to physically hurt – I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like someone was rubbing my nerve endings together.”

It was a feeling of despair that Konrads, for the first time, was unable to shake. “To me, the glass wasn’t half full or half empty. It was completely bone dry. That’s the horror of depression.”

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Konrads would try everything in the proceeding months, from chain smoking to drinking in order to overcome his depression. Everything, it seems, except asking for help.

“I was not a voluntary seeker of help,” he admits. “I was too proud – I would think, ‘I’ve been through this before! I’ve had tough times before! Pull your socks up, get your act together!’. The time when I grew up, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was a ‘big boys don’t cry’ mentality’.

“But boys are allowed to cry. Men are allowed to cry! You can’t get through [depression] by yourself. This stuff, it’s chemistry in your brain. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

It wasn’t until 2002 that Konrads would get to the bottom of his affliction. He found himself sitting alone at a function for the Black Dog Institute, the NSW government’s anti depression unit, when Professor Gordon Parker approached him and uttered the line Konrads will never forget: “He said he saw the light go out of my eyes”.

Konrads recalls feeling an immense sense of relief after being diagnosed. He was finally able to accept that what was happening to him wasn’t his fault – that unlike a competitor against whom he could have tried a little harder and swum a little faster, this was a far superior challenger. It came from within.

With medication and therapy, Konrads no longer has crippling black periods. He attends group counselling to overcome the alcohol reliance that was responsible for so many of the reckless highs he experienced, however he does – much to his own disgust – smoke the odd cigarette. And while there are the occasional slips when he berates himself for missed chances – such as when he thinks about his bronze medals – when this occurs he is able to dissect it from a different, more self-aware position.

“In my life I got confused with the concept of competitive, and the concept of personal best. Competitive is trying to beat the other guy. A personal best is when you’re only racing yourself, and doing the best you can.”

“The difficulty with that is that it’s hard… it’s easy to say ‘okay, I’m going to do my PB’, but it’s hard to really live it, breathe it and believe it. I haven’t got that skill, or that mindset; I’ve always been in the habit of comparing myself to others.”

“Life today is very gratifying, because I’m aware of that,” he concludes. “I know that sometimes I can be too tough on myself. Often I’m too tough on myself; I think I punish myself! There are times when I look back and I think I could have done better, but that doesn’t help anything. Bottom line is I’ve achieved some great, incredible things in my lifetime, and that is good enough.”