Jenny  Thompson by Tina All rights reserved. 11/00

    No one knows when swimming started.  Pictures of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans showed them swimming.  People taught themselves to swim by watching animals.  In the Middle Ages people from Europe did not swim because they thought the water was cursed. By the 1800's swimming was popular again.  Swimming was an event in the 1896 Olympics in Athens, Greece. There was only one kind of stroke used - this was the breast stroke.  That soon changed because swimmers wanted to go faster.  It wasn't until 1912 that women could be in the Olympics. The events women were in were the 100m freestyle, 400m freestyle, and plain diving.
    There are rules governing the strokes of swimming.  The strokes are backstroke, breastwork, butterfly, and freestyle.  The judges look for arm and leg movements, starts and and turns, and the length of time you can stay under water.  Swimming competitions take place in a heat, with the eight fastest swimmers in the finals.  The four fastest out of the eight are put in the middle lanes.  There the four swimmers have an advantage of having less turbulence in the water.  There are electronic pads at each end of the pool to time the swimmers.

      Jenny Thompson represented the United States in the 2000 Olympics.  The population of the U.S.A., according to the 1997 almanac, is 250,000,000 (this number was rounded). United States is in the Northern Hemisphere and on the continent of North America.  This continent borders Canada and Mexico. The USA flag has 13 stripes and 50 stars. The 13 stripes stand for the original colonies ,and the 50 stars stand for all the states in the United States.