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Swimming and Diving Paintings Gallery |
High Dive
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Success - Swimmers
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Olympic Swimmers
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Enter Gallery
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Gallery Description
Swimming has been known since prehistoric times. Drawings from the Stone Age were found in the “cave of swimmers” near Wadi Sora in Egypt. An Egyptian clay seal dated between 4000 and 9000 B.C shows four swimmers believed to be doing a variation of the front crawl. The remains from the Indian palace at Mohenjo Daro from 2800 B.C contains a swimming pool. Depictions of swimmers are also found from the Hittites, the Middle Eastern Civilizations and the Egyptian tombs. Written references can also be found dating back to the 2000 B.C in books like the Iliad, the Bible and other sagas. Swimming was not part of the ancient Olympic games, but the Greeks used to build swimming pools and practice swimming. Swimming was one of the noble skills of a Samurai in Japan and they used to hold swimming competitions. These can be called the ancestors of the modern day swimming competitions.
After the Middle ages, swimming came down in popularity since it was done in a state of undress and the conservative society at that time was completely against it. But during the 1600s many clubs and organizations were formed to promote the sport of swimming. In 1696, Thevenot, a famous French author wrote “The Art of Swimming”, describing the techniques of swimming. This book was translated to English and was used as a reference of swimming for many years to come. A turning point in the history of swimming was a swimming competition in 1844 in London. The British and the Americans who participated in the competition were using different styles, which gave them some advantage of the other team. The late 1800s saw the development of another swimming styles, the sidestroke.
Swimming became part of the Olympic competitions in 1896 in Athens. It started with 4 events and was a male-only competition. The coming years saw many variations and many different styles of competitions. One of the most famous swimmers was Mark Spitz who won seven gold medals in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. From the humble beginning of just four events for Olympics, swimming has not come up to 32 events, 16 for men and 16 for women.
The history of diving also goes back centuries. Evidence of this is found in the old undersea-ornaments found on land. This breath-hold diving style was not very effective and hence people started hunting for alternatives. Breathing through hollow reeds, breathing from air-filled bags were tried but found to be unsuccessful. Metal helmets and leather diving suits helped to withstand the water pressure, and the air pumped down from the surface using manual pumps, allowing extensive underwater trips. Scuba equipment was also modified over the ages to facilitate easy and longer underwater explorations. Associations like PADI(Professional Association of Diving Instructors) was developed to train people in safe and effective scuba diving skills.\
Swimming and diving continues to fascinate people all over the world, as an exercise, a sport or a simple past time. Go through our gallery of swimming and diving paintings for a beautiful collection of paintings.
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Saturday, July, 5 th
2008
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