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Do you love being in the pool? Then swimming is the perfect sport for you. Competitive swimming is one of the most popular Olympic sports. This can be an individual or team sport if you participate in a relay. The 4 basic strokes are freestyle, backstroke, breastroke, and butterfly. There's also the medley, which is an event where you take turns swimming diffrent strokes per a lap. The medley order is butterfly, backstroke, breastroke, and freestyle. If you join a swim team you can attend swim meets. This is where you compete against other swimmers from other swim teams. Swimming is not only a fun sport but also has many health benefits. It's a great workout because you need to move your whole body against the resistance of the water. It provides a full body workout, because nearly all of your muscles are used during swimming.
There are many succesful olympic swimmers that have won many medals and are very famous. One of the famous olympic female swimmers is Missy Franklin. She is a five time olympic gold medalist and has held world records in the 200-meter backstroke and in the 400 meter medley relay. She is part of the U.S. National Swim Team. She attended the University of Cslifornia where she also swam for the college's swim team. A famous male olympic swimmer is Micheal Phelps. He is now retired but is still known for his passion for swimming. He is the most successful olympian of all times with a total of 28 medals. Phelps competed in his first olympics at the age of 15. He broke the world record for the 100-meter butterfly at the 2009 World Championships. He is married to Nicole Johnson and has three sons. There are many othe olympic swimmers who have set many records and won many medals.
Here are 10 intresting, wierd, and fun facts about swimming... 1. Swimmers sweat in the pool 2.The oldest stroke is the breaststroke 3. There is enough water in Olympic-sized pools to take 9400 baths 4.Most of the United States’ population cannot swim 5.The first swimming goggles were made from tortoise shells 6.Swimmers use every major muscle in their bodies 7.Swimming burns more calories than running or biking 8.The biggest pool in the world is 7 times bigger than a football field and you can find it in Casablanca, Marroco 9.The first ever swimming race was held 2055 years ago in Japan 10.Swimmers’ ankles are so flexible, they can touch the ground with their toes while laying down on their backs