‘Didn’t tell anybody’: Lisa Curry drops teen pregnancy bombshell in new book

Former Olympian Lisa Curry has dropped a series of bombshells in her new book, including one secret she’s kept since she was 18.

Lisa Curry has revealed the “dread” she felt after accidentally falling pregnant at just 18, before deciding to have a secret termination.

It was 1981, and the teen swimming champ had just moved to Canberra after securing a scholarship for the government-funded Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), and transferring her teaching studies to the capital.

She had left her boyfriend behind in Brisbane – but soon after she made the move, she realised her period was late, throwing her future into chaos.

“The thought filled me with dread – this was completely unplanned and I didn’t know what to do. I was still just 18 years old,” Curry writes in her autobiography, Lisa: A memoir – 60 years of life, love & loss, released today.

Lisa Curry pictured after winning gold in the Women’s 100m Breaststroke during the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. Picture: Getty Images

Curry looks on during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Picture: Getty Images

A test confirmed that Curry was indeed pregnant, and she immediately informed her partner, who was “very supportive”.

“My mind was racing. I didn’t want to be pregnant! It was a mistake. I didn’t want a baby, I was too young, and I wanted to keep swimming. What was I going to do?” she wrote.

Curry detailed the “terrifying” moment she told swim coach and AIS boss Don Talbot, who helped her discreetly arrange a termination, and how she felt she had no other choice at that time.

“For someone who loves and adores babies so much, I look back on this decision now with surprise. But I was very young,” she wrote.

“I wanted to swim, and there seemed to be no other option for me.”

Curry kept training until her appointment in Sydney, and took just two weeks off afterwards before getting back to training, and putting the experience behind her.

Lisa Curry’s new book is out today. Picture: Instagram

“I wasn’t upset. I didn’t think it was wrong. But I didn’t tell anybody about it. I don’t think I even told my friends. I’m not even sure my mum ever knew,” she wrote.

Soon afterwards, Curry broke up with her boyfriend – and reflecting back now, she said she had no regrets about either decision.

“I’m not proud of this story, but I don’t regret it either. I didn’t want to be a mum at 18. I wasn’t equipped for it. It wasn’t planned and it wasn’t meant to be,” she wrote.

Curry also details her struggles to reconcile her memories of her charming, late father Roy, with her mother Patricia’s stories of the abuse and violence he inflicted upon her.

As a child, Curry and her siblings were unaware of the “dark undercurrents” to their otherwise “idyllic” family life – but the book explains how Roy Curry was “often abusive” and had an “anger inside him” which he took out on his wife, expecting a hot meal ready for him at all hours and frightening the children with his outbursts.

Before her death on March 3 this year – just 18 months after the devastating loss of Curry’s 33-year-old daughter Jaimi – Patricia Curry told her daughter about the “worst day” of her life – when she tried to flee her husband with the kids in tow, only to have him lie down in front of the car as she tried to escape.

Earlier, he had tried to hit her with a terracotta lamp base, and the following day, he hit her so badly she was left with a black eye for weeks.

Curry lost her daughter Jaimi in 2020. Picture: Lisa Curry/Instagram

“I saw bruises on Mum’s arms, but she always said she had fallen, or opened the door and knocked herself, and I never questioned it,” Curry wrote.

“I was very young then, not even ten years old. In the early years, the violence was hidden from us, although it escalated and became increasingly obvious the older we got.”

“These days, we’re more aware of domestic violence, and about coercive control but, in those days, it was considered a private matter within the family.

“This was the reality of how we grew up.”

The book also covers the loss of Curry’s daughter Jaimi in September 2020 in heartbreaking detail, after years of struggles with mental illness, alcohol abuse and eating disorders.

“You don’t know what life’s going to throw at you, you don’t know what’s going to happen, so spend time with the people you love,” Curry writes.

“Get off the phone, get home from work earlier, be with the people that you love the most, because you don’t know what’s in your future.”

Lisa: A memoir – 60 Years Of Life, Love & Loss by Lisa Curry with Ellen Whinnett (HarperCollins, $39.99) is out Monday.