eli5 Why are there multiple swimming techniques in sports?

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I guess this applies to many different sports but it seems even more obvious in swimming. Why bother with imposing styles or technique if the only goal is to go as fast as possible?

Like with the high jump. The way people do it now is more efficient than the way they did it a hundred years ago so athletes adapted, they didn’t create categories to keep the older technique relevant. What am I missing?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There are races for “go as fast as possible”, these are called “freestyle”. There are swimming reasons for the breast-stroke and back-stroke. The butterfly stroke was considered by some the fastest stroke, but as athletes got better the Australian crawl became the dominant stroke in freestyle competitions. Butterfly was kept around because it makes for some great photos.

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