Conrad Francis – first Lankan to swim the butterfly stroke under 56s

Conrad Francis

Source:Dailynews

Conrad Anthony Francis is a former Sri Lankan swimmer, who specialised in the butterfly events.

He is a two-time Olympian, a three-time swimmer at the Commonwealth Games, and a double Gold Medallist in the 50m and 100m butterfly events at the Asian Age Group Championships.

Francis was born on August 8, 1981 and had the distinction of representing Sri Lanka at two Olympic Games in 2000, Sydney Australia and in 2004, Athens, Greece.

He also had the satisfaction of participating at three Commonwealth Games in 2002 at Manchester, England, 2006 at Melbourne, Australia and 2010 at New Delhi, India.

The former schoolboy of St. Joseph’s College, Colombo swam in his first international meet in 1992 at the Asia Pacific Age Group Swimming Championships in Beijing, China. Francis began his swimming career at the age of nine years and received the certificate of Honour awarded for the most prestigious Josephian in 1996. Incidentally, he was the youngest ever recipient of the ‘Josephian Award of Excellence’. In 1996, the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka (NOCSL) identified him as a promising swimmer and awarded the IOC Solidarity Scholarship through the Australia Sports Linkage Programme.

Some of his educational and sporting achievements in Australia were completing secondary education at Rowville Secondary College in 1999 and successfully completing the Victorian Certificate of Education.

But his best individual performance came when he bagged two Gold Medals in the 50m and 100m butterfly events at the 2003 Asian Age Group Championships in Macau, China while setting new meet records in both events. Francis also became the first Sri Lankan to swim the butterfly stroke event under 56s when he competed at the 2004 FINA World Short Course Championships held in Indianapolis, Indiana. After some real hard work and determination he first made it to the Sri Lankan Team at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia where he participated in the Men’s 100m butterfly event. While swimming in heat one, he picked up a fifth seed and 58th overall by 0.81s of a second behind Latvia’s Arturs Jakovlevs in 57.44s. Thereafter, at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Francis qualified again for the 100m butterfly by receiving a Universality place from the FINA in an invitation time of 56.36s.

He performed well to challenge seven other swimmers in the second heat, including fellow two-time Olympians Daniel O’Keeffe and Nicholas Rees of the Bahamas.

Francis raced again to fifth place by a 1.93s margin behind the winner Michal Rubacek of the Czech Republic in 56.80s. However, Francis failed to advance into the semi-finals as he was placed 52nd overall in the preliminaries.in Melbourne, Australia. He also competed for the Nunawading Swimming Club under Head Coach Leigh Nugent who led his Australian Swimming Team at two Olympic Games before his resignation in 2013.