History

History

Archaeological and other evidence shows swimming to have been practiced as early as 2500 BCE in Egypt and thereafter in Assyrian, Greek, and Roman civilizations. In Greece and Rome swimming was a part of martial training and was, with the alphabet, also part of elementary education for males. In the Orient swimming dates back at least to the 1st century BCE, there being some evidence of swimming races then in Japan. By the 17th century an imperial edict had made the teaching of swimming compulsory in the schools. Organized swimming events were held in the 19th century before Japan was opened to the Western world. Among the preliterate maritime peoples of the Pacific, swimming was evidently learned by children about the time they walked, or even before. Among the ancient Greeks there is note of occasional races, and a famous boxer swam as part of his training. The Romans built swimming pools, distinct from their baths. In the 1st century BCE the Roman Gaius Maecenas is said to have built the first heated swimming pool.

The lack of swimming in Europe during the Middle Ages is explained by some authorities as having been caused by a fear that swimming spread infection and caused epidemics. There is some evidence of swimming at seashore resorts of Great Britain in the late 17th century, evidently in conjunction with water therapy. Not until the 19th century, however, did the popularity of swimming as both recreation and sport begin in earnest. When the first swimming organization was formed there in 1837, London had six indoor pools with diving boards. The first swimming championship was a 440-yard (400-metre) race, held in Australia in 1846 and annually thereafter. The Metropolitan Swimming Clubs of London, founded in 1869, ultimately became the Amateur Swimming Association, the governing body of British amateur swimming. National swimming federations were formed in several European countries from 1882 to 1889. In the United States swimming was first nationally organized as a sport by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) on its founding in 1888. The Fédération Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA) was founded in 1909.

Competitive swimming

Internationally, competitive swimming came into prominence with its inclusion in the modern Olympic Games from their inception in 1896. Olympic events were originally only for men, but women’s events were added in 1912. Before the formation of FINA, the Games included some unusual events. In 1900, for instance, when the Games’ swimming events were held on the Seine River in France, a 200-metre obstacle race involved climbing over a pole and a line of boats and swimming under them. Such oddities disappeared after FINA took charge. Under FINA regulations, for both Olympic and other world competition, race lengths came increasingly to be measured in metres, and in 1969 world records for yard-measured races were abolished. The kinds of strokes allowed were reduced to freestyle (crawl), backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. All four strokes were used in individual medley races. Many nations have at one time or another dominated Olympic and world competition, including Hungary, Denmark, Australia, Germany, France, Great Britain, Canada, Japan, and the United States.

Instruction and training

The earliest instruction programs were in Great Britain in the 19th century, both for sport and for lifesaving. Those programs were copied in the rest of Europe. In the United States swimming instruction for lifesaving purposes began under the auspices of the American Red Cross in 1916. Instructional work done by the various branches of the armed forces during both World Wars I and II was very effective in promoting swimming. Courses taught by community organizations and schools, extending ultimately to very young infants, became common. The early practice of simply swimming as much as possible at every workout was replaced by interval training and repeat training by the late 1950s. Interval training consists of a series of swims of the same distance with controlled rest periods. In slow interval training, used primarily to develop endurance, the rest period is always shorter than the time taken to swim the prescribed distance. Fast interval training, used primarily to develop speed, permits rest periods long enough to allow almost complete recovery of the heart and breathing rate. The increased emphasis on international competition led to the growing availability of 50-metre (164-foot) pools. Other adjuncts that improved both training and performance included wave-killing gutters for pools, racing lane markers that also reduce turbulence, cameras for underwater study of strokes, large clocks visible to swimmers, and electrically operated touch and timing devices. Since 1972 all world records have been expressed in hundredths of a second. Advances in swimsuit technology reached a head at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where swimmers—wearing high-tech bodysuits that increased buoyancy and decreased water resistance—broke 25 world records. After another round of record-shattering times at the 2009 world championships, FINA banned such bodysuits, for fear that they augmented a competitor’s true ability.

Distance swimming

Any swimming competition longer than 1,500 metres (1,640 yards) is considered distance swimming. Most long-distance races are in the 24- to 59-km (15- to 37-mile) range, though some, such as the Lake George marathon (67 km [41.5 miles]) and the Lake Michigan Endurance Swim (80 km [50 miles]), both in the United States, have been longer. FINA governs distance swimming for 5-km, 10-km, and 25-km (3.1-mile, 6.2-mile, and 15.5-mile) races. In 1954 a group of amateur and professional marathon swimmers formed the Fédération Internationale de Natation Longue Distance; and in 1963, after dissension between amateur and professional swimmers, the World Professional Marathon Swimming Federation was founded. Throughout the 1960s the latter group sanctioned about eight professional marathons annually, the countries most frequently involved being Canada, Egypt, Italy, Argentina, and the United States. The British Long Distance Swimming Association has sponsored races on inland waters of from 16.5 to 35.4 km (10.25 to 22 miles). The first type of distance swimming to be regulated by FINA was English Channel swimming, which captured the popular imagination in the second half of the 19th century. Captain Matthew Webb of Great Britain was the first to make the crossing from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 1875; his time was 21 hours 45 minutes. The map distance was 17.75 nautical miles (33 km), but the actual distance of a Channel Swim is frequently lengthened by tides and winds. No one matched Webb’s feat until 1911, when another Englishman, T.W. Burgess, made the crossing. In 1926 the American swimmer Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the Channel, crossing from Cap Gris-Nez, France, to Dover in a record-setting time for man or woman of 14 hours 31 minutes. Since then, except for the World War II years, crossing swims have been made annually. Several swimmers have made 10 or more crossings. The Channel Swimming Association was formed in 1927 to control swims and verify times. By 1978 the record had been lowered to 7 hours 40 minutes by Penny Dean of the United States, and by the 1990s successful crossings had been made by swimmers as young as 12 and as old as 65. Various swimmers had crossed both ways with only brief rests between the swims. Open-water distance swimming events of 10 km (for men and women) were added to the Olympic program in 2008.