Freestyle means any stroke
In a FREESTYLE race, swimmers can use any STROKE they like. Almost everybody chooses the front crawl because it is the fastest, so freestyle and front crawl have come to mean the same thing, but the rules do not say so. In a MEDLEY race each swimmer uses all four strokes in turn: the individual medley goes BUTTERFLY, BACKSTROKE, breaststroke and freestyle, and the medley RELAY starts with backstroke because it begins in the water.
Olympic pools are fifty metres long, and races are counted in LENGTHS. At each end, swimmers make a FLIP TURN, also called a TUMBLE turn: a forward somersault that lets them push off the wall with their feet without stopping.
Butterfly began as a loophole
In the 1930s some breaststroke swimmers realised the rules said nothing about how the arms had to come back forward. They began swinging both arms over the water together, which was much faster, and it was legal. After years of argument, butterfly was made a separate stroke, and it first appeared as its own Olympic event in 1956. Swimmers later added the dolphin KICK, both legs moving together, which completed the stroke.
BACKSTROKE is the only race that starts in the water, with swimmers holding on to the wall. Breaststroke is the slowest of the four, and it was the stroke most people learned first for many years.
Suits that were too fast
In 2008 and 2009, swimmers began wearing full-body suits made partly of polyurethane, which trapped air, squeezed the body into a smoother shape and reduced drag. Dozens of world records fell, some of them by large margins, and people began to say the suits were doing the work. From 2010 the rules banned them, and swimsuits must now be made of fabric and cover much less of the body.
Suit makers have also copied nature. One famous design had a surface textured to imitate the tiny tooth-like scales on shark skin, which were thought to help water flow past. Our sharks page covers the real animal.
Across the English Channel
In 1875 Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel without any aids, from Dover to near Calais. He swam breaststroke, was stung by a jellyfish on the way, and took nearly 22 hours, pushed well off course by the tides.
In 1926 the American swimmer Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to make the crossing. She swam front crawl and finished in 14 hours and 39 minutes, beating the fastest time by any man by about two hours.
Goggles, caps and the lifeguard's whistle
GOGGLES were not allowed in Olympic swimming until 1976, and before that swimmers raced with stinging eyes. A CAP keeps hair out of the way and makes the head smoother in the water. In a race each SWIMMER keeps to one LANE, and the start is a DIVE from the blocks.
At a public POOL, a LIFEGUARD watches from POOLSIDE and uses a WHISTLE to warn and to signal. On British beaches with lifeguards, the safe place to swim is between the red and yellow flags. Learning to FLOAT is one of the first and most important water skills, and every LAP ends with a SPLASH.