SYDNEY: As they sat sharing sweets beside a swimming pool in 1999, Shane Gould and Jessicah Schipper were simply getting along well, chatting about sport, life and "anything else that came up."
Yet in Sydney next month, they will meet again by the pool, and for a short time the friends will race against each other in the 50-meter butterfly (蝶泳) in the Australian championships at Homebush Bay.
Gould, now a 47-year-old mother of four, has announced she will be a return to elite competition (顶级赛事) to swim the one , having set a qualifying time of 30.32 seconds in winning gold at last year’s United States s championships. Her comeback comes 32 years after she won three golds at the Munich Olympics.
Schipper, now a 17-year-old from Brisbane with a bright future of going to Athens for her first Olympics, yesterday recalled her time with Gould five years ago.
"I was at a national youth camp on the Gold Coast and Shane had come along to talk to us and watch us train," Schipper explained. "It seemed as if we had long been good friends. I don’t know why. We just started talking and it went from there."
"She had a lot to share with all of us at that camp. She told us stories about what it was like at big meets like the Olympics and what it was like to be on an Australian team. It was really interesting. "
Next time, things will be more serious. "I will still be swimming in the 50m butterfly at the nationals, so there is a chance that I could actually be competing against Shane Gould," said Schipper, who burst onto the scene at last year’s national championships with second places in the 100m and 200m butterfly.
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