watch Olympic Swimming Schedule 2012

Watch London 2012 live stream

watch Olympic Swimming Schedule 2012

28 Jul 10:00 Men's 400m Individual Medley - Heats

28 Jul 10:34 : Women's 100m Butterfly - Heats

28 Jul 10:52 Men's 400m Freestyle - Heats

28 Jul 11:17 Women's 400m Individual Medley - Heats

28 Jul 11:53 Men's 100m Breaststroke - Heats

Hugely popular around the world as a leisure activity and a competitive sport, Swimming has featured at every modern Olympic Games. Other than the Marathon Swimming 10km event, held in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, the Swimming competition will take place in Aquatics.

Speed, strength and stamina will be key for athletes in the competition which features no fewer than 34 medal events.

Competition dates
Saturday 28 July – Saturday 4 August
Competition venue
Olympic Park – Aquatics Centre (Swimming)
Hyde Park (Marathon Swimming)
Number of medal events
34: (16 men’s and 16 women’s events in the pool, plus two Marathon Swimming events)
Number of competitors
950 (900 in pool events, 50 in Marathon Swimming)
Each country is limited to two athletes in each individual event and one team in each relay event.

Field of play

The swimming pool is 50m long, 25m wide and 3m deep. It is divided into 10 lanes, although only the centre eight are used for competition.

History of Swimming at the Olympic Games

At the first few modern Olympic Games, Swimming events were held in open water. At Paris in 1900, for instance, they took place in the River Seine. However, the rules were formalised in 1908, when the London Games staged the first Olympic Swimming competition to be held in a pool. Women’s events were introduced at the Stockholm 1912 Games.

Find out more about Swimming at the Olympic Games on the International Olympic Committee website.

The basics

There are four strokes used in Olympic competition: Freestyle (essentially, front crawl), Backstroke, Breaststroke and Butterfly. All four strokes feature in the Individual Medley and Medley Relay events. Swimmers also compete in the Freestyle Relay events.

Olympic races in the pool are conducted over a variety of distances, from 50m (one length of the pool) all the way up to 1500m (30 lengths). The first athlete to touch the electronic finishing touchpad at the end of the pool in each race is the winner.