It seems disproportionate to other sport, except maybe gymnastics. Some popular sports don’t even have any representation, like cricket or bowling or squash. How did swimming get so much representation?
In: 17
It’s primarily the insistence on copying every “freestyle” (that is, *actually* swim as fast as you can) event 3 times for the slower strokes.
To be fair, other Olympic events have variants that impose arbitrary constraints. You can run, but you can also run with stuff in the way (hurdles) or while wiggling your hips (racewalking), or while occasionally getting your shoes wet (steeplechase). However, those constrained events tend not to copy every event from normal racing. There isn’t a 100 meter racewalk or a 10k hurdles.
There also appears to be, and I’m not a sports scientist here and so can’t offer a proper explanation as to why, enough overlap in who is good at the four strokes and how you train for them that a very good swimmer is capable of competing in all four. By contrast, there is very little overlap between ordinary running and hurdles and essentially none with racewalking, so even though the events are mechanically similar, it’s a different cast of characters in each event.
Lastly, it’s possible that you’re coming at this from a US perspective. The US has long has a dominant swimming program, so local coverage often focuses on those races, including all the heats and variations. It gives lots of opportunities for Americans to see their country(wo)men win. It could well be that if you were from Jamaica you’d be complaining about all the sprinting.
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