All About Olympic Swimming

Often described as the "jack-of-all-trades and master of none," the individual medley calls for swimmers to possess a special blend of speed, technique and endurance.

In the 200m IM, a swimmer opens with the butterfly for one 50m lap and follows with one lap each of the backstroke and the breaststroke before finishing with a freestyle lap. The 400m IM simply means 100m of each stroke, and endurance obviously plays a more vital role.

All the relay teams consist of four different swimmers per country. What makes the medley distinctive is that each team member swims a different stroke for his or her leg. Obviously, countries pick their best swimmers in each discipline. However, swimmers have to be careful not enter the pool until the teammate preceding them touches the wall.

For practical reasons, the backstroke is the first event, since those swimmers start in the water. The order of the remaining strokes goes from slowest to fastest, so the second leg is the breaststroke, followed by the butterfly and finally the freestyle

Swimming was part of the inaugural Olympics of 1896 with the men's 100-metre and 1500m freestyle events. In those early Olympic years, as swimming floundered around trying to find its way, there were number of events that look downright foolish in retrospect.

The Plunge for Distance (1904) and 60m Underwater (1900) were quickly abandoned - they didn't exactly work as spectator events. The 200 obstacle race was another oddity at the 1904 Paris Games, where the swimming events took place in the Seine River. Swimmers really did have to negotiate a course dotted with obstacles - in this case, boats.

But the Olympic program soon settled on freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and relays as its disciplines, with the butterfly added in 1956 and individual medley event debuting in 1964.

While women weren't part of that first Olympic swim meet, they did get an earlier start in swimming than a lot of Olympic events, competing for the first time at the 1912 Games.

No one has yet matched the accomplishments of Spitz. Having already won two gold, a silver and one bronze in 1968, Spitz made Olympic history by winning an incredible seven gold medals in Munich four years later.

To much of the world, Spitz played the part of the ugly American, and was perceived as arrogant for predicting he'd win six gold medals in Munich. It did seem outlandish, considering no swimmer had won more than four in one Olympics to that point.

As the competition progressed, Spitz had already collected five gold medals with two more events remaining. The medley relay seemed a lock as the final race of the Olympics looked likely to be an American cakewalk.

But Spitz didn't feel very confident about the 100m. Fellow American Jerry Heidenreich was swimming extremely well and many experts considered him a favourite. As rumours swirled of Spitz's reluctance to swim in the 100m, his coach, Sherm Chavoor, knew that a withdrawal would tarnish his swimmer's reputation and urged him onward.

Spitz surprised an unprepared Heidenreich by starting out at full speed. As he was approaching the final stretch, Spitz was losing steam, but managed to reach the wall a half-stroke ahead of the surging Heidenreich. It was his record seventh gold medal - besting even his own brash prediction.

Spitz finally has a legitimate challenger to his legacy that he carved out in Munich and his name is Michael Phelps. The American phenom nearly matched Spitz's remarkable feat at the 2004 Athens Games, winning six goal medals and a pair of bronze. Phelps heads into the Beijing Olympics with some extra incentive. The Baltimore native, who is expected to be the star of the Games, will earn a $1 million US bonus from Speedo should he break Spitz's 1972 mark that he set in Munich.

In 2005, the International Olympic Committee announced the inclusion of the men's and women's 10K marathon races as an official medal event. The competition, which debuted at the 2001 world championships, will be held at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park. Twenty-five swimmers will begin in a mass start and race over four 2.5-kilometre loops.

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