While 2004 has been an extremely successful year for the Telstra Dolphins, history tells us 1984 and 1994 were pretty good years too.

In ’84 it was the Los Angeles Olympic campaign and in 1994 the Commonwealth Games in Victoria BC, Canada and the World Championships in Rome showing that a year with four on the end is a good one for Australian swimming.

After some success at the partially boycotted 1980 Olympics, and following a dominant performance at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games, the Australian team entered the Los Angeles Games with no real super stars but some quiet confidence.

That confidence however, quite rightly, might have been in the “Mean Machine” of Neil Brooks, Michael Delany, Greg Fasala and Mark Stockwell in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay.

They finished with silver, as did Stockwell in a controversial 100m freestyle where the fairness of the start was questioned.

Three other Aussies also won silver while six Aussies won bronze.

But the undoubted star of the show was unheralded Brisbane 17-year-old Jon Sieben who was responsible for one of the greatest upsets in Olympic swimming history when he won gold in the 200m butterfly. He beat both butterfly world record holders, Michael Gross and Pablo Morales on his way to a new world record of 1:57.04.

Before he arrived in Los Angeles the teenager had never swum under 2:01!

Ten years later Sieben was gone but a new superman was heading up the Australian team.

In 1994 Kieren Perkins stamped himself as the world’s best swimmer winning a swag of gold medals and setting multiple world records in a brilliant month that took in the Commonwealth Games and World Championships.

Despite his earlier and indeed later Olympic heroics, two swims in that period in ‘94 defined Perkins’ illustrious career.

On the last night in Victoria the 21-year-old Queenslander broke world records in both the 800m and 1500m freestyle in the same race (disobeying his coach John Carew) his 1500m time of 14:41.66 still the third fastest swim of all time, ten years later.

Less than three weeks later his gold medal winning, world record shattering 400m freestyle time of 3:43.80 was being talked about by many as one of the greatest swims of all time.