First Stroke

The first stroke to be swum competitively was the breaststroke. It was contested in the Ancient Greek Olympics and there are artifacts with artistic depictions of swimmers doing the breaststroke. Front crawl or freestyle, was developed around 100 years ago as Australian and British swimmers used the overarm stroke they saw Polynesians using. John Trudgen introduced the overarm stroke with a scissors kick, the Australian crawl had the swimmer flutter kick between scissor kicks. It became known as the American crawl when only the flutter kick was used. Butterfly developed from the breaststroke and was identified as a separate stroke in 1952. Well into the 1960's YMCA swimming still allowed a breaststroke kick with the butterfly stroke.