60 YEARS IN THE MAKING: The Modern Freestyle
Competitive Freestyle, the speed stroke that today dominates modern competitive swimming, got off to a slow start.
As recently as the mid 1800’s, swimmers swam almost exclusively with their heads out of the water as they side-stroked and breast-stroked their way across the pool. In 1873, an over arm stroke resembling a windmill was introduce in England by Sir Arthur Trudgeon. He had learned it from South American Indians as a young man of 11 and returned to England and used it in winning a championship race in 1875. Named “the trudgen” it is an over arm stroke that is characterized by a breast or scissor kick rather than a flutter kick.
In 1898 a Solomon Island native, Alick Wickham (photo), introduced what would even today be recognized as the freestyle or crawl stroke. George Farmer, an Australian coach, is attributed with the phrase “look at that kid crawling” … and so the stroke that dominates today’s competitive swimming was first named the “crawl”.
So to swim still faster…let’s try a different kick with the crawl…
The flutter kick wasn’t paired with the over arm crawl until 1902. British-born Australian swimming teacher, Richard Frederic Cavill, combined the two, at an International Championship in England, and set a new world record of 58 seconds in the 100 yard crawl.
But we’re still not putting heads in the water…
Perhaps because swimmers still feared water borne diseases they continued to keep their heads out of the water. But that all changed in 1906, when American Olympic athlete, “Jam”( Jamison) Handy experimented with putting his face in the water in “secret training sessions”and became the first swimmer to use bilateral breathing action in competition.
“Handy is responsible for modern freestyle breathing, and the body position made possible by modern breathing. He invented the legless crawl for distance swimmers, the 2 or 4 beat “pause that refreshes” for middle distance, and lines on the bottom of the pool for sprinters to keep their heads down and see where they are going. He was the first swimmer to use the alternating arm stroke in backstroke and the first swimmer to narrow the kick and change the timing in breaststroke. This stroke of alternating legs and arms performed on the front is technically now known as front crawl and is currently the dominant stroke in freestyle events.” (International Swimming Hall of Fame)
BACKSTROKE
In 1915, British swimmer Austin Rawlinson pioneered the use of the alternating arm backstroke, paired with a flutter kick. To swim backstroke faster, modifications in kick cadence have been tried, but it wasn’t until the 1988 Olympics that a stroke modification significantly cut backstroker’s times.
BACKSTROKE “BLASTOFF” STARTS AND TURNS
At the 1988 Olympic Games, David Berkoff swam the first 33 meters of the 100m backstroke entirely underwater using a butterfly kick. Nicknamed “Blastoff , Berkoff was experimenting with ways to minimize drag –a major factor in swimming fast-and had practiced a technique of swimming many meters underwater at the start and at each turn to cut time. Berkoff was beaten in the finals of the event by Daichi Suzuki who won the gold in 55.05 as he had also perfected the method in secret.
FINA, concerned with safety quickly limited the underwater start to ten meters, which was later expanded to the current underwater distance start limit of 15m in 1991.
BREASTROKE + PHOTOGRAPHY = BUTTERFLY
Swim Coaches are always studying their swimmers starts, strokes and turns looking for ways to help them increase their speed. In 1928, University of Iowa Coach David Armbruster, was doing just that when he introduced the use of underwater photography for stroke analysis.
When analyzing breaststroke, Coach Armbruster realized that bringing the arms out of the water increased velocity by eliminating “the dead spot” (glide-arms fully extended). Jack Sieg, a student of Armbruster coached in this method, swam 100 yd Breastroke in close to 1 minute. Sieg’s speed did not go unnoticed and by 1938, all breastrokers used the “out-of-water” arm motion in competitions. By 1952, this style finally became a stroke in its own right…the butterfly.
BREASTROKE: ALWAYS TRYING TO GO FASTER
In 1956 a Japanese swimmer Masaru Furukawa found a way of swimming faster breaststroke: swimming the stroke mostly underwater. Furukawa won the Olympic gold medal that year, and set the stage for other competitive breastrokers to copy his style.
When some competitors passed out during races due to oxygen starvation, a new rule was introduced by FINA, limiting the distance that can be swum underwater after the start and every turn, by demanding that the head break the surface after each complete stroke cycle.
