A BRIEF HISTORY

The freestyle has roots that go back thousands of years. An ancient Egyptian wall relief clearly shows soldiers of Ramses II using an overarm stroke to pursue their Hittite enemies across the Orontes River more than 3,200 years ago.

The crawl stroke itself seems to have been invented independently in several tropical areas of the world at least several hundred years ago. In the late eighteenth century, the great explorer Captain James Cook described the inhabitants of the Solomons, and a number of other Melanesian and Polynesian islands, as swimming a type of crawl. More than two centuries earlier, Portuguese explorers of coastal Brazil, near modern-day Rio de Janeiro, noted that the local Indians also swam with an overhand stroke.

It seems that wherever conditions were appropriate, people learned to swim. The islands of the South Pacific, with their warm, calm waters, provided ideal conditions. Not only was swimming fun and a respite from the tropical sun but it also had its rewards: fish and shellfish for food, shells for decoration and exchange. Over time, it seems, the islanders became more and more proficient, eventually developing a form of crawl stroke.

It was Australians, however, who first adopted and then refined the technique they observed among their island neighbors. Probably the most sports-minded people in the world, the Aussies have always been particularly fond of swimming. In 1893 a young man named Harry Wickham introduced the crawl in Australia. It seems that Wickham had learned the stroke while visiting the island of Rubiana. He taught it to his twelve-year-old brother, Alick, who caught the eye of George Farmer, a local swim coach. The story goes that Farmer, astounded by the boy’s speed and his unorthodox technique, exclaimed, “Look at that bloke crawling on the water!” The name stuck, and the modern era of swimming was born.

In 1902 two Australian brothers, Syd and Charles Cavill, popularized the stroke in Europe. The following year they came to the United States, where the stroke was dubbed the Australian crawl. By the time they arrived, European and American swimmers were already familiar with another overhand stroke, the trudgeon. Named after an Englishman who learned the technique in South Africa in the 1880s, the trudgeon combined an overarm recovery with a wide scissor kick. Even today I occasionally see older people swimming laps using the trudgeon.

The Cavills’ Australian crawl featured a two-beat flutter kick: two kicks for each arm cycle. American swimmers promptly improved on it, substituting a faster four-beat kick. Since then the stroke has become progressively faster and its stars well known. The first swimmer to gain world renown was Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, a three-time Olympic champion, who is also credited with popularizing the sport of surfing. The sport has seen many superstars: Johnny Weissmuller, the first man to break a minute for 100 meters, who parlayed his swimming success into a Hollywood film career as Tarzan; Mark Spitz, who won an unprecedented seven gold medals in seven events at the Munich Olympics in 1972, setting world records in every one; Russia’s Vladimir Salnikov, regarded by many as the greatest distance swimmer of all time and the first man to swim 1,500 meters in under fifteen minutes; and, more recently, America’s Matt Biondi, world-record holder in the 100-meter freestyle, swimming’s glamour event.

Unlike many other sports, swimming has always had its share of female superstars. These include Gertrude Ederle, an Olympic champion who in 1926 became the first woman to swim the English Channel; Australia’s Dawn Fraser, who held the world record in the 100-meter freestyle from 1956 until 1971; Penny Dean, an American whose record for swimming the English Channel is faster than the fastest men’s time; and America’s sweetheart, Janet Evans, whose world-record times are nothing short of astounding.