Swimming has been around for a long time, but when was it first raced? The first ever televised swim race was held in 1846 in Australia. They swam the 400-meter freestyle, and from then on, swimming has now become one of the most popular sports.
What is a 400 meter swim you may ask? Swimming events are like money; a 25 is one lap, like one quarter. A 50 is two laps, and so on and so forth. So, a 400 meter race is 16 laps around the pool!
The events in Olympic swimming are the following (all in meters):
50m freestyle, Men's record holder-Jordan crooks (19.9) Women's record holder-Gretchen Walsh (21.1)
100m freestyle, Men's record holder- Pan Zhale (46.4) Women's record holder- Sarah Sjostrom (51.71)
200m freestyle, Men’s record holder- Paul Biedermann (1:42.00) Women’s record holder- Ariarne Titmus (1:52.23)
400m freestyle, Men's record holder-Sun yang (3:40.14) Women's record holder-Katie Ledecky (3:59.70)
800m freestyle, Men's record holder-Sun yang (7:32.12)Women's record holder-Katie Ledecky (7:32.12)
1500m freestyle Men's record holder-Sun yang (14.31.02)Women's record holder-Katie Ledecky (15:20.48)
100m backstroke, Men's record holder-Thomas Ceccon (51.60)Women's record holder-Regan Smith (57.13)
200m backstroke, Men's record holder-Aaron Peirsol (1:51.92)Women's record holder-Regan Smith (1:58.04)
100m breaststroke, Men's record holder-Adam Peaty (56.88)Women's record holder-Lily King (1:04.13)
200m breaststroke, Men's record holder- Qin Haiyang (2:05.48) Women's record holder- Kate Douglass (2:12.72)
100m butterfly, Men's record holder-Caleb Dressel (49.68)Women's record holder-Gretchen Walsh (55.18)
200m butterfly, Men's record holder-Micheal Phelps (1:51.51)Women's record holder-Summer McIntosh (1.59.32)
200m medley, Men's record holder- Micheal Phelps (1.54.00)Women's record holder-Katinka Hosszu (2:06.12)
400m medley, Men's record holder-Micheal Phelps (4:03.84)Women's record holder-Summer McIntosh (4:24.38)
4 x 100 freestyle relay, Men's record holder-USA (3:07.82)Women's record holder-USA (3:25.01)
4 x 200 freestyle relay, Men's record holder-USA (7:01.87)Women's record holder-Australia (7:37.50)
4 x 100 medley relay, Men's record holder-USA (3:26.78) Women's record holder-USA (3:49.63)
Three keys to make a swimmer great
There are three main things that make a swimmer great: diet, consistency, and sleep. Diet matters almost more than any of the three. You should always be mindful of what you eat. However, nothing is necessarily ever a bad eating habit. If you keep up with a healthy diet, it’ll help your muscles store energy, thus allowing you to perform better.
Since swimmers exercise so much, a high carb diet helps store energy. While I talk about a healthy diet, most swimmers either before or after a race will have a glass of chocolate milk. Now you may wonder, “Why chocolate milk?” Well, it has more protein than regular milk, which is necessary for our bodies, due to being the building block to help build your muscles, and just enough sweetness for a tiny sweet treat.
Consistency is next. If you skip two days in the pool, it is equivalent to four. If you skip a week, it's equivalent to two weeks. This is told to every swimmer by their coach, and while sounding like a myth, it's true. Whenever I skip a day, I feel like I've missed multiple. Although it may seem that one day would not make a difference, your body forgets the rhythm, and becomes out of tune, sort of like a guitar.
Unlike other sports, swimming is like a dance, and the more you skip, the more your body forgets how to “dance.” Katie Ledecky, one of the greatest female swimmers holding multiple world records, has said "It varies day by day, but in a given week, I train about 25 to 30 hours a week.” Ledecky has 10 practices a week, plus weight lifting for five sessions. She continues to train this way, even when the Olympic season isn’t even near. Consistency really is key.
Sleep is another thing that contributes to becoming a great swimmer. Although sleep makes everyone better at everything they do, it is especially important for swimmers. Make sure you get a good night's rest for a great result in the pool!
In this guide linked below for swimmers, we can see just how essential sleep is for performance. It states that, “Sleep is one of the most important aspects of recovery for swimmers. Without enough quality sleep, physical and mental performance declines, making it harder to hit your training goals.” Although every living thing needs sleep, athletes need it to perform well.
What makes a great swimmer
Now that you know what makes a great swimmer, what makes a great race? In one word: confidence. This is my 11th year swimming now, and if there is one thing that I've needed this entire time to have a good race, it's confidence. You already put the training into it, your body is fully capable of great things, and regardless of how bad it will hurt, all that matters is that you believe you can do it. There have been so many times when I doubted myself in a race, and did terribly because of it.
And looking back now, that's what's held me back. If you stand behind the blocks, shoulders high, back straight, remembering what to do once you dive in, knowing you can do whatever it is you are trying to achieve, you will do so. In the Daily Pilot article from May 4th, 2024, my teammate Melanie Pang, was interviewed about how our season had gone and said, “I think it was good… Some people got nervous in the finals, so we didn’t do as well as we thought, but we still did good as a team.”
This goes further into the confidence topic, truly showing an example of nerves taking over your performance. So yes, to be a great swimmer, you must be confident.
Now that we’ve covered swim life, let's talk about where these great swimmers come from. Most of them, like Micheal Phelps, Katie Ledecky, and Gretchen Walsh, come into the light during high school. In Phelps’ book, Beneath the Surface, he talks about how his training life included double practices every day, with a rest day on Sundays, and this led him to the Olympic trials at fifteen years old! Just like him, most of these great swimmers we know of became something special during their teen years.
CMHS Swim Team
Our school's swim team has grown so much over the years! Although our team has always been relatively small, we have a lot of talented swimmers.
Our coaches, Coach Keith and Coach Diggy, have led us to great victory in recent years. In 2023, our boys team won CIF Division 3 for the first time in school history! This put them in Division 2, whilst our girls stayed in Division 3. In 2024, our boys won CIF yet again, and our girls placed 3rd, being the highest the team has ever placed. The boys’ win last year has now placed them in Division 1 while the girls are now in Division 2.
It was such a surreal thing to experience, and we still cannot believe how far we’ve come. I’ll never forget the week before CIF, when we talked about how it would be “funny” if we won again, and we were in awe when we did. Our school records have been intact for quite some time now, but as of last year, are constantly getting broken! The boys have been on such a high road, and we cannot wait to see what's in store for the Mustangs this year!
Although this is only my second year being a part of the high school’s team, I am truly grateful to be a part of it. It is such a cool experience to be in a place with people who love to swim just as much as you do. Our team is one of the only teams I've ever been on where I've had this much fun. We know how to take the pressure off and just have a good time. Even though it’s a small group of us, we truly have bonded into a big family.
Our head coach told us at the beginning of the season, “I’ve never had a team that doesn’t argue with one another until you guys showed up. You truly are some great Mustangs.” Some of my best high school memories were made on this team, and I'm so lucky to have two more years to make some more. And we hope to make our coach proud and carry the legacy of “great Mustangs” on for as long as we’re here.
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