Conrad’s initial years were at St. Joseph's College, where his coaches Shirley Abesena, Ranil Gunasena and Ruwan Manawadu realized that they had a prodigy in their hands who had the potential to shine. And he did shine and rise to herculean heights establishing 111 swimming records in every conceivable area of the sport. In a short period of time, the name Conrad Francis was synonymous with Sri Lankan swimming and everyone who had ever stepped into a pool knew about him. Conrad was ultimately selected to represent Sri Lanka at the 2000 Sydney Olympics as well as the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games

This was the start of his international career which peaked when he won two Gold Medals in the 50 and 100 Metres Butterfly Stroke events at the Asia Championships held in China, and became the first ever Sri Lankan Swimmer to do so at an international event. I was given the rare honour of watching the very humble and down to earth Conrad streak across the pool in an effortless manner and the sheer speed and professional manner at which he performed this feat is surely a testimony to what he has achieved today as one of the swimming greats of Sri Lanka.

Briefly tell us about your earliest days in swimming?
I started swimming at the age of eight, and to be very honest I didn’t start swimming in a swimming pool. I actually started swimming in the beach with my grandpa, and I’ve never looked back ever since! Back in those days, swimming was fun for me because I was a kid and I did not know that much about swimming. All I knew was to basically get into the water and survive. And my grandfather was a very good swimmer (Anton Ludewike) and we basically swam together during the weekends. He used to drag me to the reef and “Leave me there” and come back! So it was basically my survival and whether I could survive or not! And that is where it all started and I think that was the stepping stone and from which I worked my way up.

Even my initial swimming days involved being pushed into the deep end and figuring out how to get to safety!
(Laughing) That’s normal actually! Even my first coach at St. Joseph’s, Shirley Abesena took me to the diving board and told me to admire everything including the scenery and then seconds later all I knew was that I was down in the water! I didn’t talk to him for a while after that. (Laughing) But that’s where it all began.

What do you think your strengths in swimming are?
I think it’s the discipline, the dedication and the determination that I have. If I want something very badly, I will strive to do it. There will be many obstacles but I will make sure that I surpass everything and achieve my goal.

You are described as one of Sri Lanka’s Elite Swimmers. How does it feel to be called this?
Tough Question! Well, I should say that I’m honoured. I’m honoured that people respect me for my talent and for what I have done for the country and I’ll continue to keep doing it as far as I can go with my physical attributes and my physical body. But it’s no secret that as you get older nothing comes easy. You have to work twice as hard to maintain what you have. I’ve realized this through experience but I believe that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it and if you have a goal. If I want to achieve a certain mileage in a certain week, I’ll apply myself. Whether it comes or not is a different matter, but it is the mental strength that counts because swimming is a mental based sport. It’s about how strong you can be in the water and out of the water, and how focused you can be.

Apart from being a successful professional swimmer, you’ve brilliantly managed to balance your academic career and graduated with a degree. How did you achieve both these accolades?
Tough Question again! Well, I finished high school in 2000 at the Rowville Secondary College in Australia and that year was basically the year of qualification for the Olympics which was around the 1999-2000 period. And it was tough to balance both. Training starts at 5.00AM in the morning and goes on till 7.00 AM. School starts from 8.00 AM to 2.00 PM and training again from 5.00 to 8.00 in the evening.

My studies were basically done on a bus with highlighters and text books! You’d probably never see me with an exercise book writing notes. That was very rare. Everything was written on the side of a text book and paying attention I think was my main key method of studying. What I mainly did in class was just to sit and watch.

And I think it was more of the listening and getting the theory into my head, and the practical application happened when I was in the bus by trying to read and analyze what I had learnt and what had happened during the class.

The other thing, I think, is when you are an athlete; you tend to be more disciplined and you know your focus area. My life was more on a timetable basis. I had no time to play around, because time for me was the essential key. You miss one minute and that’s one minute gone. You can’t get it back. So I was on a tight schedule, but as I said, if I wanted to achieve something I will Go for it.

How far did your experience in Australia help you to become what you are today?
A lot. I think that is where it all began for me, both for my swimming career and my personal life. That’s where it all started. The turning point for my swimming career was when I left Sri Lanka in 1996. When I arrived in Australia, swimming was a totally different ballgame. You walk into the pool and it’s so professional and in black and white. You do what the Coach says or you can walk out. Those were the two options and I had no options anyway!

When I initially arrived in Australia the standard of swimming was so high that I just couldn’t manage it. Just to keep up with those guys in the first month was the toughest challenge for me. Basically, you were told to do ten 100’s at a stretch and for me it was a thousand meters nonstop! (Laughing) And I started wondering whether it was worth it and whether it was time to go home now! But then again, as you start swimming and as the days go by, you start getting the rhythm and the speed and get used to their capacity of training. You have to push yourself. It’s that extra bit that you never did in Sri Lanka.

So once I did that and once I got that hang of the pace that they swum at, it wasn’t an issue anymore. It was all about working harder than I’d never done before in Sri Lanka. Back home I was doing close to upon 8000m per day. In Australia it was 8000m per session! So it was almost 16 Km per day. (Laughing) I think that’s where I realized what was lacking in Sri Lankan swimming and why we are so behind in the sport. Once I got into that mindset of doing that mileage and having so many kilometers behind me then my Coach told me that I “must push myself”. He knew that I could have done the job. But it was in my hands. I had to get myself motivated and it was a different environment. I was away from home and on my own and I had to do everything possible to motivate myself.

And for me, my closest father was my coach. He was my coach, my mom and my dad. He was the only one I could talk to and cry on to. And he used to guide me and tell me “Ok. In this set you have to swim like THIS. This is the way you are going to feel, but don’t worry. You WILL overcome this. So I had my own theory for every set, on how to overcome the situation and once I applied that theory it was basically a walk in the park. It was all about controlling myself and just going another step forward during training.

In your opinion, what are the most technical aspects of the sport?
It’s not the quantity. It’s the QUALITY of training. Anybody can swim and keep swimming up and down that black line. But it’s what you do specifically during training is the key factor. If you are a sprinter, the key factors are your starts, your turns your underwater and your techniques. And of course yes. You need your power and your mental strength.

But then you need to focus and train specifically for that race and that’s what I think helped me to become a better athlete and a better person and a sprinter in whole. I had a coach for everything! I am specialized for butterfly and breaststrokes, so I had a butterfly coach and then I had a breaststroke coach. Then I had a dedicated coach only for pure sprinting and for my starts. So everything is a big puzzle.

It’s not just swimming, swimming and more swimming! It’s a puzzle which has to fit into its links and pieces. I also had my physiotherapist, my masseur and a psychologist. So it was like an entourage!

So it is very professionally managed?
It is VERY professional. There is no room for error. Sprinters are called the more arrogant guys and we don’t muck around! (Laughing). Basically the coach waits for us until we are ready and it’s not the opposite! We are more like the butterflies and more gentle and tender and more prone to injuries and have to take care of ourselves twice as much! And it’s more to do with self respect. If you respect yourself and think you can carry on doing what you want to do, then nothing will be impossible for you.

What do you think are the most important things for swimmers to be “sure that they do” during a workout?
Key Factor. Stretching is number one. You just can’t get into the water and swim, because you have to prevent injuries. As an example, even before I train, I have to stretch for about 45 minutes to one hour. It’s a mental game again. If I don’t stretch and hop into the water, I feel that I am very stiff and not doing the right thing. My body doesn’t feel free and I don’t get the free movement that I need.

So stretch and hydrate yourself as much as you can before you start and continue to keep on hydrating yourself and continue to keep stretching, even in the water. When we finish a set, we have a break of one to two minutes. So you have to do what you can in that little time to get the best out of you. That’s my philosophy.

When you are in the midst of a very challenging workout what goes through your head. What do you think about or say to yourself?
I always look at the big picture. Say if there is a competition coming up, I will select the race that I am good at, for example my 100 m butterfly, and If I am doing a challenging set I’ll make sure I try to lower my timings or keep my best time and my training time as close as possible all the time, at least within 2-3%. I’ll not let my timings change beyond that because if I do that I’m letting go of myself. I always keep myself on the line and push myself as much as possible regardless of whether I hurt or anything.

I’ll challenge myself and say, “This is the target I need to achieve, and this is the target that I am going to hold for every set”. And at the same time I think of the hard work that another athlete will be doing much more than me.

So to circumvent and compensate for that, I make sure that I do twice as more and work harder and put myself into a situation and imagine that my competitor is right next to me at that very moment and nominate him as my challenger and make sure that I am always ahead of him.

Are there any defining moments in your career which have taught you something that has made you a better swimmer?
Be humble. My dream was to swim at one Olympic. But I was lucky enough to swim at two, which were the Sydney Olympics and the Athens. And one thing I have learnt is that the higher you go, you can be the best swimmer in the country and you can be the world record holder, but you have to be humble.

If you are not humble, it’s not worth it. The higher I go; I always want to become more humble. When people talk to you, just smile and be graceful. Nowadays you get a lot of athletes who think in different lines, but my parents have taught me always to be simple and be honest. Be honest to yourself and honest to the country.

Keep your head down and do your best.

What do you consider to be your best performance that you will never forget?
I think that the 2003 Asian Age group championships in Macaw where I won two Gold’s in the 50 and the 100 Meter butterfly with two Asian Game Records was my best performance. That day was quite unpredictable because I wasn’t hoping for two Gold’s since I had just come off the world championships and I didn’t swim too well there.

I wasn’t feeling great and it just wasn’t me. And once I returned home after the world championships, I was told that I had to go on this tour. And to be honest, I actually hesitant for once and told them that I was not feeling my best. But it was the swimming committee that said “Go on it and get the experience” So I left with my coach a week before the competition because I asked for a week’s training so that I could get used to that environment. And I think that is where I performed the best! It just came out of me. I was relaxed, but under pressure, because I knew I had a chance despite my opposition all being from foreign countries who had mostly trained in the USA.

So it was more like Australia, Singapore, USA based competitors, and overcoming all of that competition, was an achievement and remarkable in itself! Because after all it was something that no one had done in Sri Lanka up to that point, because no one had won Gold outside the country and I was actually privileged and totally surprised!

This is one of my unforgettable moments, and of course the two Olympics at Sydney and Athens also rank high up in my list of unforgettables! The Athens would be more favoured, because that’s where the Olympics all started and to be a part of that historic moment was just unbelievable and it is something that I would always treasure.

Tomorrow we speak to Conrad on his life outside swimming...