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.
On the women’s side of the draw, Sarah Sjoestroem takes the crown with 23.61 seconds in race time across a 50m distance. To understand why this is the case, let’s break down the fastest swimming strokes in order of the slowest.
Breaststroke
The slowest swimming technique is the breaststroke. Competitively, breaststroke can be swum individually at 50, 100, and 200m distances and in 200 and 400m individual medley races. Breaststroke is also a part of team medley relay races across all levels of competition. British athlete Adam Peaty holds the world record for the fastest 50m breaststroke swimming time at 25.95 seconds, with Lithuanian’s Ruta Meilutyte holding the women’s record at 29.16 seconds.
Backstroke
Like breaststroke, backstroke has various multiplicities from individual to team races, ranging from medleys to middle distance 200m races. The backstroke is essentially a front crawl but on your back. This particular stroke can be challenging to master due to navigating backward without forward sight.
For the fastest speed across distances, competitive backstroke requires a tumble turn at the wall, whereby swimmers turn onto their front and perform a somersault underwater, pushing off at the wall onto their back, with coaches teaching athletes to count their strokes to gauge when to perform the turn.
Russian swimmer Kliment Kolesnikov holds the world record for the 50m backstroke with a time of 23.55 seconds. His female counterpart, Australian Kaylee Mckeown, set the world record for 50m backstroke at the 2023 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup (2023) in Budapest at 26.86 seconds.
Butterfly
The infamous butterfly, regarded by many as the hardest swimming stroke to master, is one of the quickest in the sport. Coming in two seconds quicker than backstroke across a 50m distance, Swedish swimmer Sarah Sjoestroem holds the record for the fastest butterfly across this discipline at 24.43 seconds, with Ukrainian Andrii Govorov setting the men’s record at 22.27, coming in two seconds shy of the front crawl world record.
Butterfly demands expert control of both legs and arms in a fluid motion. Unlike the other strokes on this list that work by arms and legs moving one after the other, the butterfly requires your legs to work simultaneously through a dolphin kick alongside your arms. Challenging to learn, the butterfly is one of the quickest strokes to master to get an advantage in the pool.
What is the Fastest Olympic Swimming Stroke?
The fastest Olympic swimming stroke is the same as the fastest overall swimming stroke – the front crawl; the stroke is the quickest across all events, not just at a 50m distance. While champions have come and gone, decorated Olympian Michael Phelps is known to be the greatest swimming athlete to grace the pool, winning 23 gold medals across four Olympics.
Phelps is a disciplinarian in every sense of the word, gaining champion status across all strokes.
How Many Swimming Strokes are There?
There are five swimming strokes if you count freestyle as a discipline. Freestyle allows all swimming strokes to be performed, giving swimmers flexibility. Due to front crawl being the fastest, athletes choose this discipline as their primary stroke when competing in a freestyle race. Freestyle, front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly are all verified strokes in competition.
Which Swimming Strokes Uses the Most Energy?
The Butterfly stroke uses the most energy compared to other swimming strokes (according to Swimming.org) . For 30 minutes of swimming, the butterfly burns around 450 calories compared to other disciplines, such as front crawl at 300 calories, backstroke at 260, and breaststroke at 200 calories across the same time frame.
The Hierarchy of Fastest Swimming Strokes
Unsurprisingly, the front crawl is the fastest swimming stroke for both men and women. However, as highlighted, the difference in speed is minimal – a matter of seconds between the slowest and quickest stroke. Between breaststroke and front crawl, a mere five seconds exist between both disciplines across a 50m distance.
Due to these minimal differences, every second and split counts when racing short-distance events such as the 50m sprint. The fastest competitive swimming strokes and times require the most proficient athletes to shave the tiniest of margins off existing times to become champions of the pool.
To learn how to perform the various swimming strokes outlined in this article, check out the swimming courses on the ISnation app.
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