Is nearly as good as

Usage examples of rivals.

Of necessity, the Mechanists had used genetic techniques stolen from their rivals the Shapers to turn the roaches into colorful pets.

Their rivals, the Mechanists, had replaced flesh with advanced prosthetics.

I feel for you will suffer no delay and no rivals, not even the slightest inconstancy.

He paid his court to the Countess Braun, but he had rivals there who were not afraid of him.

Angry roars filled the air and torches waved menacingly as the Kofukuji monks prepared to fall on their rivals with broadswords and halberds.

The monks of Enryakuji discovered too late that their rivals had ousted them from their position, for the funeral carriage had reached the foot of Funaoka Hill in a blaze of torches, and silence enveloped the mourning crowds.

Kiyomori, put an end to Fujiwara dominance as well as gained ascendancy over their rivals, the Genji.

One would look far before meeting two as handsome men as these two rivals for the love of one woman.

Friends ratted on neighbors, jealous lovers turned in their rivals and all the time the computerized cameras watched everybody.

Polycarbon Clique: a fungus and an alga, potential rivals, united in symbiosis to accomplish what neither could do alone, just as the Clique united Mechanist and Shaper to bring life to Mars.

Wellspring had stolen her in an act of heroic daring, robbing his rivals in C-K to begin again in Martian orbit.

Both rivals were converging on the rendezvous camp, where the six contestants would receive their final briefing from the Regal Adviser.

In this manner did the crafty Fathom turn to account those ingratiating qualifications he inherited from nature, and maintain, with incredible assiduity and circumspection, an amorous correspondence with two domestic rivals, who watched the conduct of each other with the most indefatigable virulence of envious suspicion, until an accident happened, which had well-nigh overturned the bark of his policy, and induced him to alter the course, that he might not be shipwrecked on the rocks that began to multiply in the prosecution of his present voyage.

A few rise by the slow process of acknowledged fitness,--men who probably at first have not thought of offices, but are chosen because they are wanted, and those whose careers are grudged them, not by their opponents or rivals, but by the Browns and Joneses of the world who cannot bear to see a Smith or a Walker become something so different to themselves.

You were patrons -- not rivals but understanding friends and cheerers-on.