Swimming

Humans have swum since prehistory — Stone Age cave paintings depict swimmers — but organized competitive swimming took shape in 1830s London, where the National Swimming Society ran races in artificial pools. The breaststroke-dominated European scene was upended by overarm strokes observed from Indigenous swimmers of the Americas and the Pacific, which evolved into the front crawl. Swimming was on the program of the first modern Olympics in 1896, held in the open sea.

1. 1830s

   Organized racing begins

   London's swimming societies staged regular competitions, codifying race distances and etiquette at a time when breaststroke was considered the only respectable stroke.

2. 1908

   FINA founded

   Formed alongside the London Olympics, the international federation standardized race distances, stroke definitions, and world record-keeping.

3. 1956

   Butterfly becomes its own stroke

   After swimmers exploited breaststroke's rules with an overarm recovery, butterfly was separated into a distinct stroke with its own events at the Melbourne Olympics.

4. 1976

   Goggles at the Games

   Goggles were permitted in Olympic competition for the first time, transforming training volume by ending chlorine-limited sessions.

5. 1998

   The underwater limit

   After backstrokers and others began swimming most of each length underwater, a 15-meter underwater limit off starts and turns was applied across strokes to keep racing on the surface.

6. 2010

   The supersuit ban

   Full-body polyurethane suits — which helped demolish 43 world records at the 2009 World Championships — were banned; textile-only rules returned the sport to human limits.