Do you ever see Olympic level swimmers use a backstroke for freestyle?

Question

In my limited understanding of swimming I believe I read the backstroke can be of similar speed but it doesn't have the long diving start, but it's easier to sustain a faster pace over long distances? I dunno, but I imagine someone somewhere could be a big backstroke specialist who happens to be competing in a freestlye.

Also, if you do wanna do it, do you have to start from the normal position or can you dive in and roll over?

Idle curiosity

Answer 1

i don't know what your really asking, but when your competing in backstroke you have to be in the water, you can't dive off the block. but in freestyle after the flip turns a lot of people go on their back and stream line before they flip over and start free styling again.

i hope this helps.

Answer 2

no backstroke is slower!

but i have seen people do buttlerfly, it depends on the person what they are faster at, and how much endurance, and strength they have.

in high school and colege i saw alot of girls do fly instead of free because they were insanley fast at it!

Answer 3

Wikipedia says, "The front crawl stroke is almost universally used during a freestyle race, as this style is generally the fastest....

Most competitive swimmers choose the front crawl during freestyle competitions, as this style provides the greatest speed. Freestyle competitions have also been swum completely and partially in other styles, especially at lower ranking competitions as some swimmers find their backstroke quicker than their front crawl. During the Olympic Games, front crawl is swum almost exclusively during freestyle."

If you take a look at the world records, the records in backstroke and butterfly are all slower than their equivalents in freestyle (crawl). Apparently on the highest levels of swimming, the front crawl is simply best by test.

The Wikipedia article on the backstroke says, "Backstroke is of similar speed to butterfly. Race times for the butterfly are superior to those for the backstroke mostly because the former allows a racing start from poolside and the latter does not. In races beyond 200 meters, backstroke would actually be the faster of the two. The maximum swimming speed for backstroke is around 1.84 meter per second. Due to its position on the back, backstroke uses different muscles in the upper body than other styles."

This is somewhat borne out by comparing the world records in the various disciplines: the butterfly beats the backstroke (for both men and women) in the 50-meter race, beats it by more in the 100-meter race, but actually beats it by less in the 200-meter. If the butterfly was actually a faster overall stroke (as an answerer said), one would expect it to increase its lead over longer distances. Of course there's the caveat that these records were set at different times by different people, and there may be other reasons why backstroke starts to gain over the long haul (perhaps butterfly is a more tiring stroke).

In any case, if you compare the backstroke to freestyle, the same does not hold. The gap between records keeps widening as the distance increases. It seems that, even factoring out the slower start, the backstroke is a slower stroke overall than the front crawl.

As for whether it is legal to dive in and roll over to a backstroke, I don't see why not. Freestyle can be done in any style or mixture of styles. If you can start with a front crawl and switch to a backstroke in the middle, surely you can also start by diving into the pool (as in the front crawl) and switch to the backstroke immediately.