They have been photographed with Muhammad Ali, stolen, sold at a bric-a-brac sale and auctioned on eBay but champion swimmer John Konrads' beloved Olympic medals have finally found a safe home here in Canberra.
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The National Museum of Australia paid $37,078.10 for the collection which also includes his Olympic polo shirt, woollen tracksuit top and a terry-towelling robe.
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Konrads emigrated from Latvia with his family as a child and learnt to swim in NSW. He set 26 individual world records, and was included in the 1956 Australian Olympic team at the age of 13.
Konrads, who was present as the items were officially taken into the Museum's National Historical Collection, said that he was delighted the museum had purchased the items. ''I don't want them in an attic,'' he said.
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''If I won the lottery I would donate them, but I was an amateur, I didn't make a cent out of my sporting career, just a scholarship for uni.
''Now they are exposed to the public, particularly to kids, who hopefully will be inspired by my experiences as a kid to pursue sport of any kind.''
National Museum director Andrew Sayers said the institution was incredibly pleased to have been able to purchase the collection which represented ''one of the great Australian stories''.
''It is a story of Olympic achievement, but it is also a story of the success of a family who came to Australia in 1949 and these objects tell the story very powerfully,'' he said.
Taking pride of place in the collection is Konrads' 1500m freestyle gold medal, his 400m freestyle bronze medal and his 4x200m relay bronze medal, all from the 1960 Rome Olympics.
The medals, which were stolen along with 18 others in a home burglary in 1985, were recovered in 2009 after an American collector spotted them on eBay. Police tracked down the seller, who had purchased a shoebox full of medals at a bric-a-brac sale in Brisbane for $200, completely unaware they had been stolen.
Most of the stolen medals have now been recovered.
The Olympic medals will be on display alongside a replacement set that the International Olympic Committee gave Konrads after the theft.
Konrads said that he felt ''very emotional'' when the medals were returned and was excited that his children and grandchildren would be able to see them on display.
''I really think that's why the museum was interested ... because I was the first migrant kid, non-British migrant kid to win an Olympic gold medal,'' he said.
''If I can just inspire one kid,'' he said smiling.