Episode 88
Peter Evans (swimmer)
Tue, 2017-Aug-01 00:16 UTC
Length - 3:56
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Tuesday, 01 August 2017 is Peter Evans (swimmer).
Peter Maxwell Evans (born 1 August 1961) is an 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 Summer 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.
After the Olympics, Evans moved to the United States to study business and compete for the University of Arizona. He was less successful in the short-course format used at college level, which placed more reliance on efficient turns. Evans returned to Australia for the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, winning silver in the 100 m breaststroke and gold in the medley relay. He competed in his second Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984, winning bronze in both the 100 m breaststroke and the medley relay. Evans retired after missing selection for the 1986 Commonwealth Games and attempted to follow his father into politics. He unsuccessfully stood as the candidate for the Liberal Party of Australia in the electoral district of Perth at the 1986 state election, before pursuing a career in business.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:16 UTC on Tuesday, 01 August 2017.
For the full current version of the article, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Evans_(swimmer).
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