Leisel Jones

Leisel Jones OAM (b. 1985) is the first Australian swimmer to have competed at four Olympic Games and is one of world swimming's greatest ever breaststroke competitors. Born in the Northern Territory and raised in Brisbane, she was only fifteen when she won two silver medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. When she announced her retirement from international swimming in 2012, she had won a total of nine Olympic medals, fourteen World Championship medals and twelve Commonwealth Games medals. In her 2015 memoir Body Lengths, she candidly discussed her history of anxiety, depression and her experience of the bullying and humiliation often endured by female swimmers around issues of weight and body image. Consequently, Jones has been an ambassador for Beyond Blue and was one of the faces of Swimming Queensland's 'Growing up in Lycra' campaign. Jones was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2015.

This portrait of Jones is one of four images photographed by Peter Brew-Bevan for a feature story in Good Weekend magazine. Published on 26 September 2015, this image featured on the cover. As Brew-Bevan noted on his Facebook page: 'It was an absolute pleasure creating this cover – despite the commotion of Huskies chasing down little ducklings in the pool and it being a rather chilly 13 degrees! And no the pool was not heated!'

Purchased with funds provided by the Annual Appeal for Contemporary Australian Photography 2021
© Peter Brew-Bevan