Competitive swimming
Competitive swimming races through water using four distinct styles.
Competitive swimming is an individual or team racing sport that requires the use of one's entire body to move through water, taking place in pools or open water. It emerged as a competitive recreational activity in the 1830s in England and became one of the most popular Olympic sports, with varied distance events in butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, and individual medley.
- field
- Competitive swimming
- known_for
- Olympic sport with four major styles: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle
- governing_body
- World Aquatics (formerly FINA)
- pool_length
- 50 meters (long course) for Olympic events
Lore & Background
The four major competitive styles—butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle—have been relatively stable over the last 30 to 40 years. The individual medley combines all four styles in equal distances. Since the 1990s, the underwater dolphin kick has been a major change, used to maximize speed at starts and turns. FINA later ruled that swimmers may not go farther than 15 meters underwater. In 2014, FINA allowed a single dolphin kick added to the breaststroke pullout before the first breaststroke kick.
Reader's Guide
Competitive swimming's significance lies in its status as a premier Olympic sport and its global governing body, World Aquatics. The sport requires specific techniques and regulations for each stroke, swimsuits, caps, and jewelry. Training typically involves a cycle of overloading the body with work, then tapering before competition. The 'shave and taper' method reduces drag by removing hair and dead skin. Competitive swimming includes pool events (long course 50-meter pools) and open water events (5 km, 10 km, 25 km), with only the 10 km open water event in the Olympics. The sport's legacy includes innovations like the underwater dolphin kick, which revolutionized starts and turns, and the introduction of technical swimsuits in 2008 that led to world records with swimmers spending more than half the race submerged.
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