Aquatics

Aquatics comprises six different sports: Diving, High Diving, Swimming, Artistic Swimming, Open Water Swimming and Water Polo.

Diving

Diving became popular in Sweden and Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries. The sport was primarily practised by gymnasts who started performing tumbling routines into the water. Diving was included in the Olympic Games for the first time at St. Louis 1904. The springboard and platform events have been included since the 1908 Olympic Games in London. Women’s diving featured for the first time at Stockholm 1912. 

The first Olympic competitions differed from those which exist nowadays, notably with respect to the height of the platforms and springboards. The diving programme has been relatively stable since the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam: men and women take part in 10-metre platform and 3-metre springboard events. Sydney 2000 witnessed the entrance of synchronised diving on both the springboard and the platform.

High Diving

High diving is the act of diving performed from even greater heights, and athletes can enter the water at speeds approaching 100 kilometres per hour. Diving from extreme heights is believed to have originated with cliff diving in Hawaii in the 18th century. World Aquatics added high diving as its sixth discipline in 2013, and it featured for the first time at that year’s World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Spain. The World Aquatics Championships features a 27m platform for men’s competition and a 20m platform for the women’s event. High diving is not part of the programme at the Olympic Games.

Swimming

Swimming can be traced back to the Stone Age but did not truly become an organised sport until the early 19th century. Swimming has featured on the programme of all editions of the Olympic Games since 1896. The very first Olympic events were freestyle, while backstroke was added in 1904.
 

In the 1940s, breaststrokers discovered that they could go faster by bringing both arms forward over their heads. This practice was immediately forbidden in breaststroke, but gave birth to butterfly, whose first official appearance was at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. This style is now one of the four strokes used in competition.
 

Women’s swimming became part of the Olympic Games at Stockholm 1912, and has been part of every edition since. The men’s and women’s programmes are identical. At the last Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, men and women competed in 17 events involving four different strokes across a range of distances. Freestyle races covered 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1,500m. The butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke races each covered 100m and 200m, while all four strokes were used in the 200m and 400m individual medley events. The 4 x 100m freestyle, 4 x 200m freestyle and 4 x 100m medley relays completed the programme, along with a mixed relay in the 4 x 100m medley.

Artistic Swimming

At the turn of the 20th century, Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer, toured the United States performing water acrobatics. Her shows proved very popular, and a sport was born. A relatively new discipline, artistic swimming became an Olympic sport for the first time at the Olympic Games Los Angeles 1984, with solo and duet events. These events also took place at the Olympic Games in 1988 in Seoul and in 1992 in Barcelona. Atlanta replaced them in 1996 with a water ballet for eight people. Since the Olympic Games Sydney 2000, the Olympic programme has included the team event and the duet.

Open Water Swimming

Open water swimming has an ancient history and is the popular practice of swimming in outdoor bodies of water. International races governed by World Aquatics are held over 5km and 10km, while a 3km knockout sprint has been a recent introduction.
 

Beijing 2008 featured open water swimming’s debut at the Olympic Games with 10km races for men and women. It has remained on the programme ever since. A 4 x 1,500m mixed relay was added to the World Aquatics Championships programme in 2022.

Water Polo

In the early days of water polo, the players rode on floating barrels that resembled mock horses, and swung at the ball with mallet-like sticks. This made it similar to equestrian polo, hence its name. Water polo was developed in Europe and the United States as two differing sports. Ultimately, the faster, less dangerous European style predominated, and today this is the form of the game practised universally. It consists of seven-player teams competing across four seven-minute periods in a match. Water polo made its Olympic debut at Paris 1900. At Paris 2024, 12 teams qualified for the men's tournament  while 10 competed in the women's. Teams play each other in round-robin groups, with the top four from each pool going into the knockout stage . 

Qatar hosted the hugely successful 2014 World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m), and in 2024 held the World Aquatics Championships including all aquatics sports. This marked the first time that World Aquatics’ flagship event was hosted in the Middle East.