Throughout a swimmer’s competitive journey, athletes contest in various swimming strokes to advance from local to regional and even international levels of mastery. As swimmers progress up the competitive pecking order, they specialize in stroke-specific techniques, such as butterfly and backstroke, for competitive advantage. However despite this, there is a hierarchy regarding the fastest swimming stroke, with swimming techniques varying in speed.
In this respect, it is important to take a measured approach when assessing the speed of swimming strokes. First, these techniques should be evaluated over the shortest competitive distance possible – 50 meters. Similarly, the results must be taken from the fastest athletes in the world across stroke disciplines and gender categories.
Stroke race times over the shortest competitive distance, swam by the best athletes, effectively capture the fastest possible competitive time achievable, facilitating precise analysis of the speed at which strokes are performed.
What is the Fastest Swimming stroke?
The most common stroke performed by novices and athletes alike, the front crawl otherwise known as the freestyle, is the fastest swimming stroke with a world record of 50 meters in 20.91 seconds, swam by Brazilian Cesar Cielo Filho at the Brazilian National Championships in 2009.
