Friend Could Turn Foe for Two WA Swimming Stars

City of Perth Swimming Club teammates and leading female performers Blair Evans (WAIS) and Jessica Pengelly plough through kilometre after kilometre every day of the week. Side by side they push and drive each other in pursuit of a common goal. A goal that will eventually pit one against the other as opponents, at the highest level in world sport.

Despite now chasing the same black line as successful international athletes, the training partners both cut very different paths on their way to the top. With 10,000km of ocean between them Evans from Perth laid the foundations for future success in the iconic Beatty Park Aquatic Centre, home of the 1962 Empire Games, while Pengelly chased her dream in a dilapidated local pool in Cape Town, South Africa.

Unknowingly, both Evans and Pengelly had met previously. Before teaming up under the watchful eye of Australian coach Matt Magee the two had faced off many years before in the Final of the Girls 13-15years 400m Freestyle at the 2005 Pacific School Games.

Pengelly laughed “it’s funny how Blair and I were both there together(racing) and didn’t know each other; and now all these years later we train together”

That day it was Pengelly who triumphed over her teammate, a bronze medal behind Australian golden girl Kylie Palmer with Evans a distant sixth. These days it is Evans as reigning Australian Champion who owns the Freestyle events while Beijing Olympian Pengelly has gone on to stake her claim in the Backstroke and Breastroke disciplines.

The girls do however retain common ground. The 400m Individual Medley is the leveller where a mere nine-tenths of a second separates the two big guns of Western Australian Swimming.

“It is inevitable that they will meet each other in the medley” Coach Matt Magee stated.

“It won’t be this summer, but maybe at the World Championships in Shanghai, maybe again at the World Cup later in the year, we will see”.