Discipline's origin

   Swimming is an ancient discipline, as prehistoric man had to learn to swim in order to cross rivers and lakes. There are numerous references in Greek mythology to swimming, the most notable being that of Leander swimming the Hellespont (now the Dardenelle straits) nightly to see his beloved Hero.

   Swimming as a sport was probably not practised widely until the early 19th century. The National Swimming Society of Great Britain was formed in 1837 and began to conduct competitions. Most early swimmers used the breaststroke or a form of it. In the 1870s, a British swimming instructor named J. Arthur Trudgeon travelled to South America, where he saw natives there using an alternate arm overhand stroke. He brought it back to England as the famous trudgeon stroke - a crawl variant with a scissors kick.

   In the late 1880s an Englishman named Frederick Cavill travelled to the South Seas, where he saw the natives performing a crawl with a flutter kick.. Cavill settled in Australia where he taught the stroke that was to become the famous Australian crawl.

   Olympic history

   Swimming has been held at every Olympic Games. The early events were usually only conducted in freestyle (crawl) or breaststroke. Backstroke was added as of the 1904 Games. In the 1940s, breaststrokers discovered they could go much faster by bringing both arms overhead together. This was banned in the breaststroke shortly thereafter but became the butterfly stroke, which is now the fourth stroke used in competitive swimming. Women's swimming was first held at the 1912 Olympics. It has since been conducted at all the Olympics. Men and women compete in an almost identical programme. They have the same number of events but the freestyle distance for women is 800 metres while for men it is 1500 metres.

Credit: IOC

For further info., please visit http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/programme/disciplines_uk.asp?DiscCode=SW.