Swimming is an individual or team racing sport that requires the use of one's entire body to move through water. The sport takes place in pools or open water. Competitive swimming is one of the most popular Olympic sports, with varied distance events in butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, and individual medley. In addition to these individual events, four swimmers can take part in either a freestyle or medley relay. A medley relay consists of four swimmers who will each swim a different stroke, ordered as backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle.
Start of the 4 × 100 meters men's relay during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing
Leander swimming across the Hellespont. Detail from a painting by Bernard Picart.
The routes taken by Webb and T.W. Burgess across the English Channel, in 1875 and 1911, respectively.
Katie Ledecky set the Olympic records in 2016 for the 400m and 800m freestyle.
In sports, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific goal.
Two men engaging in a sprint finish at the end of a 5-kilometre road running competition
The Men's lightweight coxless four rowing race at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London
The start of the 2018 Austrian Grand Prix auto race
Two women in a tight sprint finish at the end of the Australia World Cup cycling race
