Swimming (sport)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Swimming as a competitive sport carries a history that stretches back tens of thousands of years, to Stone Age cave paintings that show humans moving through water around 10,000 years ago. Written references appear as early as 2000 BC, turning up in texts as varied as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible, and Beowulf. Yet for all that ancient familiarity, the organized, rule-bound sport we recognize today began to take shape only in the 1830s in England. What does it take to move a human body through water as fast as physics will allow? What rituals do swimmers perform in the final days before a race? And how did a single underground kick, banned for a time and then partially restored, reshape every stroke in the pool? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. From Ponds to Pools

  ›

  In 1828, the first indoor swimming pool open to the public, St George's Baths, opened in England. By 1837, the National Swimming Society was already running regular competitions in six artificial pools built around London. The sport spread quickly. By 1880, when the Amateur Swimming Association was established as the first national governing body, more than 300 regional clubs were already operating across the country.

  In 1844, two Native American participants at a London competition introduced European audiences to the front crawl. Sir John Arthur Trudgen later refined the hand-over-stroke after observing South American swimmers, and when he debuted the technique in 1873 he won a local competition in England. His stroke is still regarded as the most powerful available to swimmers today.

  Captain Matthew Webb delivered one of the sport's defining early feats in 1875, becoming the first man to swim the English Channel using the breaststroke. He covered the 21.26 miles between England and France in 21 hours and 45 minutes. That crossing went unmatched for 36 years, until T.W. Burgess made it in 1911.

  Other nations followed England's lead in building formal structures for the sport. Germany established its swimming federation in 1882, France in 1890, and Hungary in 1896. The first European amateur championships were held in Vienna in 1889, and Scotland hosted the world's first women's swimming championship in 1892. Men's swimming then entered the inaugural modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, with women's events following at the 1912 Games. The world swimming body, then called FINA, was formed in 1908 and renamed itself World Aquatics in December 2022.

• 3. The Dolphin Kick Revolution

  ›

  David Berkoff changed competitive swimming at the 1988 Olympics by swimming most of the 100 m backstroke race underwater, using the dolphin kick to break the world record in the preliminary heats. The technique let swimmers exploit the low-resistance environment beneath the surface in a way no competitor had done so systematically before.

  Denis Pankratov pressed the tactic further at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, completing almost half of the 100 m butterfly underwater to claim the gold medal. The strategy was spreading across strokes. Then, at the 2008 European Short Course Championships in Rijeka, Croatia, Amaury Leveaux pushed the concept to an extreme wearing one of the new polyurethane technical suits. He set world records of 44.94 seconds in the 100 m freestyle, 20.48 seconds in the 50 m freestyle, and 22.18 seconds in the 50 m butterfly, spending more than half of each race submerged.

  World Aquatics responded by capping underwater travel at 15 metres from any wall. The polyurethane suits that had amplified everything were banned from the 1st of January 2010, after 70 world records fell in 2008 alone and 66 Olympic records were broken at the Beijing Games, with races where the first five finishers each swam faster than the old world record had stood.

  The dolphin kick did not disappear. In 2014, World Aquatics ruled that a single dolphin kick could be added to the breaststroke pullout before the first breaststroke kick, a recognition that the technique had earned a permanent place even in the stroke most removed from it. American swimmers including Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte became the most prolific users of the underwater kick in the decade that followed.

• 4. Shave and Taper

  ›

  The phrase "shave and taper" captures the two rituals that define the final stretch of a competitive swimmer's preparation cycle. Tapering means deliberately cutting back training load in the days before a major meet, giving the body rest without stopping exercise completely. The body absorbs the work done during the overload phase and arrives at competition recovered.

  Shaving arrived as a serious practice after the 1956 Olympics, when Murray Rose and Jon Henricks came to the pool already shaved and won gold medals for Australia. Freshly shaved skin creates less resistance in water. A 1989 study confirmed the effect, demonstrating that shaving measurably reduces drag and improves overall swimming performance. Swimmers remove all exposed hair, and the process also strips away the outer layer of dead skin, exposing newer skin that is smoother in the water.

  Training itself is built around resistance rather than its absence. Drag suits add friction during practice sessions; some swimmers layer two suits at once, or cut holes in a spare suit to increase the pull against them. Others train in basketball shorts over their swimwear, or wear old T-shirts in the water. When those layers come off for competition, the sudden reduction in resistance translates directly into speed.

  Pool design has evolved in parallel to reduce resistance on race day. Factors now considered in fast-pool construction include proper depth, the elimination of water currents, increased lane width, energy-absorbing lane lines and gutters, and carefully designed hydraulic, acoustic, and lighting systems. The 1924 Summer Olympics were the first to use a standard 50-metre pool with marked lanes, and starting blocks were incorporated at the 1936 Summer Olympics.

• 5. Suits and Records

  ›

  The swimsuit bans of 2010 came after a period of rapid and contested record-breaking. From the 1st of January 2010, men in competition are permitted to wear only a suit from the waist to the knees, and may not wear briefs underneath jammers. Women must wear suits that stop at the shoulders and knees. The rules exist because polyurethane suits increased buoyancy in ways that governing bodies judged unfair.

  At the elite level, suits are still constructed with precision. Seams are lasered rather than stitched, because thread creates drag. The tradeoff is fragility; these suits can tear if handled carelessly.

  World record keeping itself has its own history of revision. FINA began recognising official world records in 1908, accepting times set in any pool at least 25 yards long, including split times from longer events. Several event distances were removed from the record listings in 1948 and again in 1952. A proposal by the United States and Japan at the 1952 FINA Congress called for separating long-course and short-course records, but the change did not take effect until four years later, when only times set in 50 m pools were kept as official world records.

  Hundredths of a second entered the record books on the 21st of August 1972, when electronic timing became accurate enough to justify the precision. Short-course world records were classified only as "world best times" until the 3rd of March 1991, when they were elevated to full record status. Times in the 50 m backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly were added to the official listings on the 31st of October 1994. The International Olympic Committee announced in 2025 that it would add the 50 m butterfly, backstroke, and breaststroke events to the Olympic programme, raising the total from 35 to 41 events.

• 6. Health and Injury

  ›

  Two and a half hours per week of aerobic activity such as swimming can decrease the risk of chronic illnesses and help regenerate healthy cells, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Swimming is also linked to better cognitive function, lower rates of Type II diabetes, reduced high blood pressure, and a lower risk of stroke. Because the water supports a large share of the body's weight, people can typically exercise longer in water than on land without increased joint or muscle pain.

  For those with dementia, swimming carries particular benefits: it can reduce anxiety and agitation, creates opportunities to socialize, and contributes to a positive sense of self-worth. The sport is also described as meditative, with increased blood flow to the brain helping swimmers evaluate stressors more calmly.

  The rotator cuff is the most common site of injury in competitive swimmers. Each of the four strokes places the arm above the horizontal line of the body in every cycle, and that repeated position puts pressure on the cuff's tendons. The supraspinatus tendon is the one most prone to tearing. Recovery demands patience; because the shoulder joint is stabilized primarily by muscle and tendon rather than bone, returning too soon risks turning a treatable injury into a rupture.

  Breaststroke knee, sometimes called swimmer's knee, develops from the repeated kicking motion specific to that stroke. Research has found that pain begins during the kick itself but can spread over time to ordinary daily activities unrelated to swimming. The surest protection against both injuries is catching problems early, through communication among swimmers, coaches, parents, and medical professionals before a minor issue becomes a serious one.