History & origins
The story of Swimming
People have swum for as long as there have been rivers, but organised racing began in nineteenth-century London, where an amateur association ran competitions in converted baths. The strokes themselves were invented in stages, often borrowed from swimmers outside Europe and then formalised into rules.
Milestones
10 moments that shaped the modern game.
- 1837
Organised racing in London
The National Swimming Society held competitions in artificial pools around the capital, using a form of breaststroke — the only stroke considered respectable.
- 1844
Front crawl arrives in Britain
Two Ojibwe swimmers demonstrated an overarm stroke at a London competition, beating the local swimmers easily. British observers found the splashing 'un-European' and kept using breaststroke for decades.
- 1896
Olympic debut in the sea
The first modern Olympics held swimming events in the Bay of Zea in cold open water, with competitors taken out by boat and told to swim back.
- 1902
The Australian crawl
Richmond Cavill used a stroke developed in the Pacific to set a world record, and front crawl finally became the standard racing stroke.
- 1912
Women admitted
Women's swimming entered the Stockholm Olympics, though the American team was barred from competing by its own federation over uniform rules.
- 1933
Butterfly is invented
Swimmers found that recovering both arms over the water was legal under breaststroke rules. It was so much faster that it was eventually split off into a separate stroke in 1952.
- 1972
Mark Spitz wins seven golds
Spitz won every event he entered in Munich, setting a world record in each, a haul that stood as the Olympic benchmark for thirty-six years.
- 2008
Eight golds in Beijing
Michael Phelps won eight events at a single Games, one of them by a hundredth of a second, breaking Spitz's record.
- 2009
The suit era and its ban
Forty-three world records fell at one World Championships in polyurethane suits. World Aquatics banned non-textile suits from the following year.
- 2015
Katie Ledecky rewrites distance swimming
Ledecky broke her own world records repeatedly in the 400, 800 and 1500 m, with margins over the field wider than in any other pool discipline.