Speed swimming is defined as sprints and middle distances, up to 1,500 meters, which is currently the
longest distance in international competitions in pools.
It includes freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly and is one of the major amateur sports around
the world.
History
Speed swimming was practiced throughout the ancient
world for utilitarian and health reasons. The Egyptian
hieroglyph for swimming depicted a man’s head and
one arm forward and the other back, and in Greek the
phrase for the fundamentals of education was “the alphabet and swimming.” The recurrence of the Latin
words iactare and alterna, which indicate raising the
arms alternately above the surface of the water, and
other pictorial and literary sources provide evidence
that some form of crawl was a common stroke. Greek
historians Herodotus (485–425 B.C.E.) and Thucydides
(484–425 B.C.E.) wrote about the significance of swimming, but it was Pausanias (2nd century C.E.) who
recorded that swimming races were held in honor of
the Greek god, Dionysus. In the Middle Ages, books on the art of swimming were published throughout Europe. In Japan in 1603, an imperial edict made swimming an integral part of the curriculum, thereby promoting interschool competition, which led to
nationally organized swimming races.
Not until the 19th century did regular, organized
speed swimming events begin to develop. Swimming
baths were opened in Liverpool, England, in 1828 and
other cities soon followed. Sydney, Australia, saw similar developments in competitive swimming. The first
“world championship” is also believed to have been
held in Australia; on 9 February 1858, Joseph Bennet
from Sydney beat an Englishman, Charles Steedman
(1830–?), in a 100-yard event. The first major race in
the United States, billed as the national championship,
was held by the New York Athletic Club in 1883.
In continental Europe, European championships
were conducted in 1889 by the Erste Wiener Amateur
Swim Club in Vienna; the only two events were over 60
and 500 meters (65.62 and 546.81 yards). The success
of swimming races in Britain from the mid-19th century led to a proportional increase in the prizes, which
were usually won by “professional swimmers,” who
were swimming teachers involved in giving lessons in
return for money. Interclub swimming competition
soon led to the formation of associations. In 1837 the
National Swimming Society (NSS) was formed to define and organize races that were promoted by the
weekly sporting periodical Bell’s Life.
After the formation in 1886 of the Amateur Swimming Association, teachers of swimming in Great
Britain were excluded from racing. Since that time
speed swimming has developed mostly through the efforts of amateur swimming organizations.
Swimming events were held in Athens at the inaugural Olympic Games of 1896. Three events, the 100,
500, and 1,200 meters were conducted in the Bay of
Zeas near Piraeus. Immediately after the London
Olympics in 1908 Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, and Sweden formed
the Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur.
FINA’s main roles were to establish rules for swimming
events and international competitions, to verify and
monitor world records, and to organize the swimming
programs of the Olympic Games. FINA was also instrumental in the International Olympic Committee’s
(IOC) decision to introduce swimming for women at
the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm.
The keeping of world-record times has been a significant aspect of speed swimming, and a race against
the clock is an important element of the “spirit of
sport.” Other factors, though, must be considered when
comparing times. Social acceptability and regulations,
not swimming efficiency, governed both the style and
materials of men’s and women. The neck-to-knee costumes worn into the 1930s were made of a wool or
heavy cotton, which retained much more water than
nylon, which was introduced in the 1950s, or the brief
Lycra costumes of the 1980s. It was not until the 1924
Olympics in Paris that events were held in a stadium
constructed especially for swimming and divided into
lanes separated by floating markers.
Rules and Play
The basic rule in speed swimming is that the swimmer
who touches the wall first wins. Rules cover strokes and
set standard race distances and events (relays, medleys). Strokes have evolved as swimmers discovered
more efficient ways to move through the water.
One of the major developments was the American
kick. Duke Kahanomoku (1890–1968) from the Hawaiian Islands, and later Johnny Weissmuller, epitomized
this style by swimming in the hydroplane position,
which enabled the kick to start at the hip and thereby
obtain maximum efficiency from the legs, as only the
flat of the foot broke the surface. Since that time there
have been many variations of leg kick in the crawl,
many of them cyclical.
Breaststroke, forms of which are very old, began as
a slow and jerky stroke. In 1928 Olympic gold medalist
Yashiyuki Tsuruta (1903–1986) of Japan introduced
another modification that produced a fast, nonjerky
stroke that basically remained until 1956.
Since the beginning of the 1950s, surface breaststroke improved remarkably as focus shifted to the
power from the arm movement, thereby modifying the
traditional belief that the legs provided primary
propulsion.
Swimming breaststroke under the water was faster
than the surface style, which was why many successful
breaststrokers swam longer underwater on starts and
turns, but underwater breaststroke was banned after
1957 because it gave a distinct advantage and detracted
from the spirit of the stroke.
The rules of butterfly stipulate that it is a doublecrawl with simultaneous movements of the arms and
legs. The best butterfly swimmers have used the dolphin kick, which was banned in breaststroke events because it did not comply with the strict rules of the
stroke that required a symmetrical sideways and backwards movement.
Backstroke speed swimming is a relatively recent phenomenon, not recorded until the beginning of the
20th century. The 1900, 1904, and 1908 Olympic champions all used an arm-over-arm technique, but the
back-crawl method used at the 1912 Olympic Games
by Harry Hebner (1989–1968) has dominated since.
Western nations have dominated speed swimming.
At the Olympic Games from 1896 through 1992, U.S.
male and female swimmers have dominated in all
strokes, winning 266 gold, silver, and bronze medals.
The 1996 Olympics showed signs of change. China won
6 medals, Ireland 4, Brazil and South Africa 3, and Cuba
2. The U.S. total of 26 medals did not exceed the combined total of the three top scorers: Australia (13), Germany (12), and Russia (8).
—IAN JOBLING
Bibliography: Colwin, Cecil. (1992) Swimming into the
Twenty-first Century. West Point, NY: Leisure Press. Counsilman, James, and Brian Counsilman. (1994) The New
Science of Swimming. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.