Petria Thomas: How Olympic gold-medallist stared down injury, depression to become Australian swimming great

Petria Thomas’ gilded swimming career, professional and private lives have been underlined by resilience, determination and courage to stand up against the odds.

She is leaning on those very traits to inspire the next generation of athletes in dual roles as assistant director of sport partnerships at Sport Integrity Australia and chef de mission for the Commonwealth Games, which kick off in Glasgow next month.

Thomas is using knowledge gleaned as a competitor at three Olympics, three Commonwealth Games and countless world and Pan Pacific championships to aid her role as an advocate and on-ground leader when the Australian Commonwealth Games team hits the ground in Scotland. Her aim is to have a steady and supportive influence on our athletes.

“My job is to make sure that we’re creating the right environment for all of our team members to perform at their best because we know that athletes need a support crew around them to help them do what they need to do in the pool or on the field or on the court, wherever it might be,” Thomas says.

As a leader on the ground, Thomas says she will be aiming to “inspire, influence and guide” the athletes.

“Good leaders empower,” she says. “They provide clear direction and maximise collective efforts to achieve results that couldn’t be accomplished alone.”

At one point the Games were under a cloud when original host Melbourne withdrew, citing financial grounds.

“The Commonwealth Games is a critically important part of the cycle and there was a risk for a time after the cancellation that that might not happen any more,” Thomas says.

“Thankfully, our Scottish friends have stepped in and are taking on the Games and they’re doing a great job of preparing.”

Thomas amassed 12 Commonwealth Games medals, nine gold, across her career, but it was at the Olympics, notably her final Games in Athens, that she achieved sporting immortality.

She says standing on the starting block at the Athens Aquatic Centre, she knew it was her “now or never” moment.

It was August 15, 2004, and the Australian swimmer was about to embark on her favoured 100m butterfly final, ready for one final throw of her rebuilt arm in an individual Olympic gold medal event.

Immediately to her right in lane four was Netherlands’ powerhouse Inge de Bruijn, the reigning champion and fastest qualifier, and the woman who more than anyone else stood between Thomas and her place in Australian aquatic history.

Just 24 hours earlier, the New South Wales swimmer and veteran of three Olympics had freed herself from the first shard of doubt in her final Games by earning a maiden team gold in the 4x100m freestyle.

Job done. Sort of. The 100m fly was her pet event and favoured distance, a race she had won at three consecutive Commonwealth Games (1994, 1998 and 2002), but “over-muscled” for a silver after starting as one of the favourites at the Sydney Olympics four years earlier.

“It was a now-or-never pool moment for me,” Thomas recalls. “It’s what I’d prepared for through my whole swimming career, really, but particularly over the previous few years.

“I thought, ‘well, this is the last opportunity I get’, so I wanted to make the most of it.

“Sometimes you get a bit caught up in imagining the result, but forget about the process to get the result, so I was very focused on what I needed to do in that race to get the best performance out of myself. And fortunately that was good enough.

“It is about sticking to your own race plan. You train for years and years in preparation for an event like that. You refine your racing skills and tactics for the race and how you’re going to swim it and it’s about staying true to that.

“It’s really easy in a big event to get caught up in the moment and forget the plan and just try too hard, which is something that I did at the Sydney Olympics in the 100 butterfly.

“It sounds silly, I know, but you can try too hard and over-muscle it and it doesn’t get you the performance that you want.

“I learnt a hard lesson from that particular experience in Sydney and I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.”

Thomas stuck to her plan and it worked. She won gold in 57.72 seconds, going out in a hard 27.01sec. for the first 50m but keeping plenty in reserve for a 30.71sec. second split and a meeting with destiny.

De Bruijn led at the halfway mark in 26.23sec. but faded on the return lap (31.76) to take bronze. Poland’s Otylia Jedrzejczak rallied from seventh place at the 50m turn (27.53) to secure silver with a second-lap split of 30.31.

“I was in that race up against some really fast athletes, like probably with more natural speed than me, and I knew they would be out in the first 50 metres faster than me,” Thomas says.

“It was about not panicking and knowing that I had a really strong second 50 to bring it home. So I was able to execute that pretty well.”

Thomas, OAMwho was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2005, finished with three golds in Athens, after Australia won the 4x100m medley, to go with four Olympic silver and a bronze. The tally ranks her alongside Susie O’Neill and Dawn Fraser for Olympic medals.

Add nine Commonwealth Games gold medals, a world title and three Pan Pacific triumphs, and it’s right up there with the most decorated Australian swimming careers.

Thomas, who was also chosen as chef de mission for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022, says her own experiences mean she knows firsthand the mental and physical toll of competing at an international level.

Having faced her own mental health battles, she decided to release her 2005 autobiography, Swimming Against The Tide, co-written with Andy Shea, in a bid to help others dealing with similar issues.

The book deep dives into her triumphs and battles with severe depression.

“It wasn’t easy to, I suppose, be vulnerable in that and to open up and share some of the things that I’d been through, both the good times and the not-so-good times,” she says.

“It was a really difficult process to sit down and actually work through all that stuff and get it on to paper.

“I never wrote it to make money or anything like that. It was more about telling my story in he hope that it might help someone.

I’ve had a lot of positive feedback over the years about people who have read the book and it resonated with them and that made it all worthwhile.”

She says that her own lowest ebb came after winning her first international gold at the 1994 Commonwealth Games.

“I got a bit lost after that,” she says. “Finding a way out of that took a fair time, and it was difficult and something that I would never wish upon anyone, to be honest.

“But it also made me more resilient, stronger. It helped me understand myself better and it has shaped the person that I’ve become now.”

She says being open about her experiences also makes her a better leader.

“Being authentic is also a very important leadership trait in my opinion,” she says.

Thomas believes the prevalence of mental health issues within sport is simply representative of the scale of the issue in society as a whole.

“There will always be people that struggle and sport is just a reflection of society really,” she says.

“There’s a lot more open discussion about it now and I think that’s really been a really important step forward.

“And there’s not such a stigma about sharing it with your friends or other important people in your life, to be able to lean on them a bit as well.

“So there’s been some positive shifts forward in that space, but there’s still some way to go.”

Thomas admits that, like many athletes, she is a perfectionist but often lacks self-confidence.

She does her best to make up for that lack of self-belief through hard work and preparation and by being determined and resilient.

“I don’t chase it relentlessly but I certainly strive for excellence in everything I do, but there’s probably always been a lack of self-belief underneath,” she says.

“I’m not a self-confident person, but there’s a number of characteristics that have helped me get to where I have.

“I’d work so hard in the pool. And I don’t think I could have done anything better in my preparation to be ready to perform and I think that gives you confidence — knowing that you’re well prepared enables you to actually go into things, feeling a bit more comfortable about what you’re about to do.

“And I’m very determined and a little bit stubborn.”

Those traits, along with her natural talent, were what helped her land a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, after a childhood spent in Mullumbimby, a NSW country town known as the hippie heart of Australia’s Northern Rivers region.

Her parents Denise and Alan weren’t sporty but they indulged Petria and her older sister Stacey, often driving long distances to local clubs and events.

It was a family environment steeped in discipline and perseverance, influenced in part by Thomas’ grandmother, who had been an accomplished skier and tennis player capable of competing against men.

A strong surf lifesaver, Thomas was identified at a young age by legendary Ballina swimming coach Stan Tilley, who played a central role in landing her AIS scholarship.

“Without him, I don’t know if I would have ended up at the AIS or where I would be now. He was a huge influence in my life and career and I am forever thankful for what he did for me,” Thomas says.

“I was from a small country town, the pool was shut six months of the year and we had to drive to training and my family didn’t have a lot of money.

“So the AIS was a saviour for me. It was a place I could go and pursue my sporting dreams and reach my potential, and I think I was able to do that in the 12 years I was there. It changed the course of my life for the better and helped make me the athlete that I became.”

While Thomas’ legacy may be focused on the medals she won, it also celebrates the hurdles she overcame.

During her competitive career, she endured three shoulder reconstructions along with major ankle surgery and other “bits and pieces”.

“I felt like I was pretty much doing rehab my whole career,” she says.

“With the shoulder reconstructions, in swimming no one had ever been through one before and successfully made it back and I did it three times.

“That’s something that I was extremely proud of. I’m probably equally proud of that as I was about my overall performances.”

She says that it likely crossed her mind “every day” of rehab to give it all away because the work required to get back to a competitive level was overwhelming. But each time she wanted to quit, she simply dug her heels in.

“I had a strong desire to get the best out of myself, which I felt I hadn’t achieved. So that’s really what kept driving me forward,” she says. “It was difficult, but it also taught me a lot about myself and made me a stronger person.”

One who now has the valuable skills to help the athletes of today get where they want to be.