Born: Perth, W.A.
1 August, 1961
When Peter Evans retired from competition in 1986, he was one of Australia’s most decorated swimmers. He competed at two Olympic and one Commonwealth Games, winning three individual and tree relay medals.
Evans took to swimming at a young age and soon found that breaststroke was his best event. His potential was confirmed in August 1977, his second last year at Scotch College, when he broke the W.A. 100m residential record.
In 1979 Evans was sent to England to train with the foremost breaststroke coach, David Haller. Within two months he rose from being ranked 200th in the world to a place in the top 50.
At the trials for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Evans broke the national record for the 100m with a time of 1min 04.80sec. He bettered that time by 0.25 sec when he finished equal first in his heat at the Games and in the final he went even faster (1.03.96) for a bronze medal.
Two days later Evans swam the fastest 100m breaststroke time of the games (1.03.01) and with Mark Kerry, Mark Tonelli and Neil Brooks won the gold medal in the 4 x 100m medley relay.
At the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games he won bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke, finished fourth in the 200m breaststroke and collected another gold medal in the 4 x 100m medley relay.
When Evans clocked at 1.02.87 in his 100m heat at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, he became the first Australian to break an Olympic swimming record since 1972. He won a bronze medal in the final and another bronze in the medley relay. This made Evans the only male swimmer in the world – and the only Australian in any event – to win an individual medal at both the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.