Petria Thomas

Career

Thomas earned a bronze in the 200-metre butterfly at the 1993 World Short Course Championships at age 17. The following year she took two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, in the 100-metre butterfly and 4×100-metre freestyle. After a two-year struggle, she returned at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, finishing second to fellow Australian Susie O'Neill for a silver medal. Despite a shoulder injury, she repeated her 1994 Commonwealth Games performance at the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur, and that same year won a bronze in the 100-metre butterfly and a silver in the 200-metre at the World Championships in Perth.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney she collected three medals: bronze in the 200-metre butterfly, silver in the 4×100-metre medley, and silver in the 4×200-metre freestyle. After O'Neill retired following those Games, Thomas continued despite recurring injuries. At the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, she won gold in the 100-metre and 200-metre butterfly and was part of the winning 4×100-metre medley relay team; she also swam in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay, which finished first but was disqualified when she jumped into the pool to celebrate before other competitors had finished.

At the 2002 Commonwealth Games she won five gold, one silver and one bronze, becoming the first female swimmer to win the same event—the 100-metre butterfly—at three consecutive Commonwealth Games. She then took three gold and two silver medals at the 2002 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Yokohama, Japan, and another gold in the 200-metre butterfly at the short-course championships in Moscow, Russia. Injuries soon forced her out of competition, and she spent much of 2003 recovering from another shoulder reconstruction.

In 2004 she made a comeback at the Olympic selection trials in Sydney while training with the Ginninderra Swimming Club, breaking Commonwealth records in the 50-metre and 100-metre butterfly, setting personal bests in the 100-metre freestyle and 200-metre freestyle, and narrowly missing the world record in the 200-metre butterfly.