COMPETITIVE SWIMMING

The art of swimming involves the moving of living objects through water without any artificial aid. Swimming can be used for recreational or lifesaving purposes. It is an activity that is popularly used for traveling, bathing, fishing, cooling, as an escape or for sport.

The objective of swimming competitions is to get a winner who is the fastest swimmer over a pre-determined distance. Competitive swimming officially became popular at the beginning of the 19th century. It consisted of thirty six individual events of eighteen female and eighteen male events. The popularity progressed until the sports inclusion in the Summer Olympic Games. There are thirteen recognized swimming evens in the summer Olympics where both genders compete. The events are identified by the distance in which the swimmer has to cover, the style or stroke swimming, whether it is a marathon or not and whether it is a relay or not.

The distance identifies an even ranges form 50 meters to a 10 kilometer marathon swim. The different stokes or styles permitted in competitive swimming are the breaststroke, front crawl, freestyle, butterfly and backstroke. The freestyle and front crawl are often times interchanged. However, the freestyle referees to any unregulated event as opposed to a particular stroke. For the events that need specific swim strokes, automatic disqualification is granted to a swimmer who uses a different stoke. Another fault is called by the official if a swimmer uses one or no hand to touch one wall after a lap.

The standard size of the pool in an Olympic is a 50-metre pool for long races and 25-metre pool for short races. The swimming international governing body is the International Swimming Federation (FINA). Officials for the competitive swimming are many. The starter signals the swimmers to spring off the swimming pool block at the beginning of the race. He or she may call a start a false one when a swimmer springs off before the signal is given to start the race. The finishing judge is the official who calls out the order in which the swimmers have completed the race. He or she further makes sure that all swimmers complete the race in agreement with all rules that relate to finishing the swim – using both hands at the same time to touch the wall for breaststroke and butterfly styles and the back touching the wall for the backstroke swimming. The stroke judge verifies that the swimmers are using the correct stroke while the timekeeper times the race. The final official is the referee who takes overall accountability for the entire race and has the authority to make the final decision.

If any official at any time of the race finds fault with a swimmer, that participants is referred to as disqualified (or DQ) and that swim of that swimmer is invalid. Age groups of competitions are identified in progressing brackets of 5 years apart. The frequently occurring injuries are those on the shoulders as all strokes engage in repetitive movements of the shoulders. Knee injuries are rare but still occur especially in the break stroke style swimming where the knee is repetitively clenched and released.