History of Swimming (Sports#4)

Hey guys are we good today?  

(None ever answers me :P )

                                                        ANCIENT TIMES 

As you may guess we had water since the ‘’first humans’’ so it’s obvious that someone would learn how to swim for safety reasons at least. With that said we have around 10.000 year’s old painting in a rock, of people swimming that found in Egypt and more specifically near Wadi Saura in the so called ‘’Cave of Swimmers’’  

that was discovered in October 1933 After that many and different places throughout the world had paintings of swimming or baths scenes like:! Babylonians  Assyrians Nagoda Minoan palace of Knossos  Pompeii     

                                                          16-18 CENTURY 

In the Middle Ages knights had to learn how to swim as it was considered one of the seven agilities they must have with the other 6 to be climbing, riding, shooting with different weapons, diving, participate in tournaments and finally dancing (that’s why in movies each one of them can dance!). The bad thing was that expect knights that were ‘’forced’’ to learn it most of the people didn’t cared about swimming cause middle Ages was a very conservative era! 

Apart from that, the next years that followed many people and scientists wrote books about swimming that gave valuable information on how to swim with an overall purpose that fewer people will drown from now on! 

                                                 COMPETITIVE SWIMMING 

Everything started in 1830 in England In a more formal way (ofc many other countries I bet they had swimming competitions) as 2 years before the first indoor pool was created. Later many more began to show as the popularity of swimming keep growing and at 1880 the first national governing body the Amateur Swimming Association formed. 

An interesting story is that in 1844 in London a swimming competition held. Among the competitors there were 2 Native Americans! The British only new and used the Breakstone technique but the Native Americans had a different one in which they swam a variant from the front crawl having as a result Flying Gull’s win! 

                                                                   OLYMPICS 

In 1896 in Athens 4 events about swimming took place but only for men with Alfred Hajos winning 2 of them. Later in the next Olympics followed many more swimming events took place and something that needs to be said is that in 1908 FINA (Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur) formed. Another thing I want to say is that in 1912 at Stockholm’s Olympics women could take part also. 

                    Hajos                                                

                                                                 Conclusion 

Swimming is a sport with very long history and one that will keep growing. Nowadays, many swimming pools are close to our homes so everyone can go and enjoy them IF YOU DON’T HAVE SEA LIKE GREECE HAS :P 

I am just joking it is about 15 minutes by foot for me to reach a swimming pool and 1 and a half or maybe 2 hours to reach sea with bus and train and about 1 by car. Anyway from my experience if you want to be in competitive swimming you have to ‘’spend’’ many and I repeat many hours of training to achieve ‘’results’’. There is the 10.000 hours rule if you heard of it that you spend 4 hours per day for training except 2 free days per week and that I think its about 10 years in order to be in Olympics and have great results! If you don’t want to be in the competitive mode and just like to swim for fun then I suggest go and find either a sea, river , lake( I heard most of countries that don’t have sea go in lakes instead tell me if I am wrong here) or in swimming pools either public or not if you got some money to spare. You will really like it and I can say that for sure it benefits your health a lot!!!  

                                                                       

Credits and Images 1 2 3 4

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  I hope you learned something you didnt know today, if you want more have patience i am here for you, in the meanwhile if you want to see other posts of this section just click the football history  the basketball history and the volleyball history i made recently