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.

A sprinter, he won the 100 m in an Australian record time and showed a preference for shorter events, which required less training mileage.

[1][2] 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.

After the Olympics, Evans moved to the United States to study business and compete for the University of Arizona, under Hall of Fame Coach Dick Jochums, who was just beginning his tenure at Alabama.

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 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.

Evans' mother Barbara, a physiotherapist, was a capable swimmer and won a half-blue in netball at the University of Western Australia.

[1] A week later, Evans travelled to England to train at Crystal Palace in London under David Haller, coach of future Olympic breaststroke gold medallist Duncan Goodhew.

Evans' teammates recalled him stopping during a pool session and emphatically proclaiming that "Work is a poor substitute for talent".

[8] Having qualified to swim for Australia, another obstacle arose with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which resulted in a boycott of the Games by a large part of the Western world, led by the United States.

Evans' relay teammate Tonelli believed that only the sportspeople would suffer from a boycott and that trade relations would continue unabated.

[2][11] Evans placed equal first in his heat and advanced to the final as the fourth-fastest qualifier,[12] along with Goodhew, two Soviets and fellow Australian Spencer.

This time, Australia was regarded as a medal chance, but were not seen as the main threats—Sweden, Great Britain and the Soviet Union were the most favoured teams to win.

The British had Goodhew, the breaststroke gold medallist, while Sweden's butterflyer and backstroker had won their respective events and their freestyle swimmer would come second in the 100 m.[15] On paper, Australia's team paled in comparison.

[10][17] Adding to the pressure was the fact that Australia had won no gold medals at the 1976 Olympics in any sport, and were yet to win one in Moscow, so the public were still awaiting their first victory since Munich in 1972.

Evans took the opportunity to attempt to regain the psychological ascendancy from Goodhew, confronting him privately and stating that "we will win it".

He asked his teammates to commit to swimming their legs in a certain time; Kerry vowed to swim the backstroke in 57 s, Evans the breaststroke in 63 s flat, Tonelli the butterfly in 54 s and Brooks promised to anchor the team in 49.8 s, even though he had never gone faster than 51 s. Tonelli named the foursome as the Quietly Confident Quartet, and they exhibited a quiet confidence as they lined up for the race.

[17] Evans then swam a personal best of 63.01 s to put Australia in second place, almost level with the host nation at the halfway mark.

[17] Tonelli began to lose ground in the last 50 m and was a bodylength behind until a late surge brought him to within a metre of the lead by the end of his leg.

The pair clashed over the training regime; Jochums insisted that Evans increase his mileage, something that the student strongly resisted.

In his favoured 100 m event, Evans won bronze, having been led home by Adrian Moorhouse of England and Canada's Victor Davis.

[2][13] He then combined with David Orbell, Jon Sieben and Brooks to win the medley relay in a Commonwealth Games record time.

Before the 1984 Olympics, Evans travelled to Hong Kong to train with Haller, who was coaching the British colony's swimming team.

He won the Australian 100 m breaststroke championship to qualify for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and returned to Arizona to continue training.

His Olympic campaign was placed in jeopardy when the ASU threatened to remove Evans from the team for skipping their training camp in Australia.

Evans arrived in Los Angeles with the same program as in Moscow; he entered both breaststroke events and the medley relay.

[22] Nevertheless, their opponents were able to lift and the final saw Steve Lundquist of the United States set a new world record of 1 m 1.65 s; Evans took bronze, 0.98 s behind silver medallist Davis.

[11][13][24][25] Evans recorded the second-fastest breaststroke split, slower than Lundquist, but quicker than the rest, including Davis.