Peter Evans

Who is Peter Evans?

Peter Maxwell Evans is a former Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1980s, who won four Olympic medals, most notably a gold in the 4 × 100 m medley relay at the 1980 Moscow Olympics as part of the Quietly Confident Quartet. He also won consecutive bronze medals in the 100 m breaststroke at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.

The son of prominent Western Australian businessman and politician Max Evans, Evans had a late start to his swimming career, making his debut at the Australian championships aged 17. Despite placing second in the 100 m breaststroke, he was not selected for Australia, and instead travelled to the United Kingdom to train under David Haller. During this period, he quickly improved his times and rose from outside the top 200 into the top 25 in the world rankings. Evans returned to Australia in 1980 and qualified for the Olympics in both the 100 m and 200 m breaststroke. A sprinter, he won the 100 m in an Australian record time and showed a preference for shorter events, which required less training mileage. Evans gained a reputation for often doing fewer training laps than his coach asked of him. Having rebuffed Australian government pressure to boycott the Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Evans won bronze in the 100 m breaststroke. His career peak came in the 4 × 100 m medley relay, when he outsplit his opponents in the breaststroke leg of the relay, bringing Australia into contention for its eventual win, which remains the only time that the United States has not won the event at Olympic level.