Swimming emerged as a celeste Amengual competitive sport in the

1830s in England. In 1828, the first indoor swimming pool, St George's

Baths was opened to the public. By 1837, the National Swimming

Society was holding regular swimming competitions in six artificial

swimming pools, built around London. The sport grew in popularity

and by 1880, when the first national governing body, the Amateur

Swimming Association, was formed, there were already over 300

regional clubs in operation across the country.

The routes taken by Webb and T.W. Burgess across the English

Channel, in 1875 and 1911, respectively.

In 1844 two Native American participants at a swimming

competition in London introduced the front crawl to a Western

audience. Sir John Arthur Trudgen picked up the hand-over stroke

from some South American natives and successfully debuted the

new stroke in 1873, winning a local competition in England. His stroke

is still regarded as the most powerful to use today.

Swimming is an event at the Summer Olympic Games, where male

and female athletes compete in 16 of the recognized events each.

Olympic events are held in a 50-meter pool, called a long course

pool.

There are forty officially recognized individual swimming events in

the pool; however the International Olympic Committee only

recognizes 32 of them. The international governing body for

competitive swimming is the Fédération Internationale de Natation

("International Swimming Federation"), better known as FINA.

In competitive swimming, four major styles have been established. These have been relatively stable over the last 30–40 years with minor improvements. The four main strokes in swimming are:

1 Butterfly (fly) 2 Backstroke (back) 3 Breaststroke (breast) 4 Freestyle (free)

Events in competition may have only one of these styles except in the case of the individual medley, which contains all four. In this latter event, swimmers swim equal distances of butterfly, then backstroke, breaststroke, and finally, freestyle.[6] In Olympic competition, this event (called the "IM") is swam in these distances - 200 or 400 meters or yards. Some competition also swims the 100 yard or meter IM - particularly, for younger swimmers (typically under 14 years) involved in club swimming, or masters swimming (over 18).