Competitive Swimming

Competitive swimming as defined by FINA is composed of races in a man made pool of either 50 meters or 25 meters in length. In the USA many swimming competitions are contested in pools that are 25 yards long.
There are four recognized strokes used in competitive swimming. They are Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly and Freestyle. There are stringent regulations placed on the first three strokes, while freestyle events allow nearly any stroke to be used. Most freestyle swimmers use the front crawl stroke as it is generally faster than any other stroke.