Swimming and Aquatic Sports: Pool, Strokes and Indian Swimmers

The correct answer is C, 50 metres. An Olympic-size or long course pool measures 50 metres in length and 25 metres in width, and all Olympic pool races are swum in it, so a 100 metre race means two lengths and the 1500 metre freestyle means thirty. Option A is wrong because 25 metres is the short course pool used for the World Short Course Championships and for most club meets; records set in it are listed separately from long course records. Option B is wrong because 33 metres matches no recognised standard, though pools of that rough size were used at some very early Olympic Games before the distance was fixed. Option D is wrong because no competition pool is 100 metres long; the 100 metre race is covered in two lengths of a long course pool. The width of 25 metres holds ten lanes of 2.5 metres each.

The correct answer is C, ten. A pool built to the long course standard is marked into ten lanes of 2.5 metres each across its 25 metre width. Only the eight middle lanes are used for racing; the two outside lanes are left empty so that the wash thrown up by the swimmers is absorbed rather than reflected back across the field. This is why a final has eight swimmers although the pool shows ten lanes, and why option B, eight, is the trap in this question: eight is the number of competitors and of racing lanes, not of lanes marked in the pool. Option A is wrong because six lane pools are common in schools and small clubs but not at this level. Option D is wrong because twelve lanes are not part of any aquatic standard. Lane ropes carry coloured floats to mark the last five metres before the wall.

The correct answer is B, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle. One swimmer covers all four strokes in that fixed sequence over 200 or 400 metres, and freestyle is always last. Option A is the order of the medley relay, not of the individual medley, and it is the commonest mistake on this question: in a relay the backstroke leg must come first because backstroke is the only stroke started in the water, so the first swimmer can begin from the wall while the others take flying starts. Option C is wrong because freestyle, the fastest stroke, is deliberately placed at the end of both medleys to make the finish the quickest part of the race. Option D is wrong because breaststroke, the slowest stroke, is swum third in the individual medley and second in the relay, never first. Remember the pair of orders together, since papers often ask them in the same set.

The correct answer is C, backstroke. The medley relay order is backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle, and the reason the sequence differs from the individual medley is practical. Backstroke is the only competitive stroke that begins in the water, with the swimmer holding the wall and the feet against it, so it must be given the first leg; the other three swimmers dive in as flying starts once their teammate touches. Option A is wrong because butterfly leads the individual medley but swims third in the relay. Option B is wrong because breaststroke takes the second leg of the relay and the third leg of the individual medley. Option D is wrong because freestyle is the anchor leg in both the medley relay and the individual medley, so that the fastest stroke decides the finish. Each of the four swimmers in a medley relay must swim a different stroke.

The correct answer is B, Arati Saha. The Bengali swimmer crossed the English Channel in September 1959, becoming the first woman from Asia to do so, and in 1960 she became the first Indian sportswoman to be awarded the Padma Shri. Option A is wrong but close enough to be the standard distractor: Bula Choudhury, also from Bengal, crossed the Channel three decades later and is remembered as the first woman to swim across the seven seas, a different record. Option C is wrong because Shikha Tandon is a pool swimmer, known for representing India at the 2004 Athens Olympics, not a Channel swimmer. Option D is wrong because Nisha Millet is likewise a pool and multi-national-medal swimmer of the same era. The male counterpart of this question is Mihir Sen, who crossed the Channel in 1958, a year before Arati Saha.

The correct answer is A, Mihir Sen. A lawyer from Bengal, he swam the English Channel in 1958 and went on to cross five major seas and straits in a single year, 1966, including the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus and the Panama Canal. He was honoured with the Padma Shri and later the Padma Bhushan. Option B is wrong because Taranath Shenoy was a celebrated deaf long-distance swimmer who crossed the Channel later and received the Padma Shri, but he was not the first Indian across. Option C is wrong because Sachin Nag was a pool sprinter who won the 100 metre freestyle at the first Asian Games in Delhi in 1951. Option D is wrong because Khazan Singh Tokas won a silver in the 200 metre butterfly at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games. The first person of any nationality to swim the Channel was Captain Matthew Webb in 1875.

The correct answer is B, the 1500 metre freestyle, often called the metric mile, which covers thirty lengths of a 50 metre pool and is the longest event on the Olympic pool programme. Option A is wrong because the 800 metre freestyle is shorter, though it is now held for both men and women; for many Games it was the women-only distance while 1500 metres was men-only. Option C is wrong because the 400 metre individual medley, demanding as it is, covers only eight lengths. Option D is a deliberate trap: the 10 kilometre marathon swim, added to the Olympic programme at Beijing in 2008, is indeed the longest Olympic swimming race of all, but it belongs to the open water discipline and is contested in a river, lake or sea, not in a pool. Read such questions for the words "in the pool" before answering.

The correct answer is C, seven: six field players and one goalkeeper, who is distinguished by a red cap while the two teams wear white and dark caps. Option A is wrong because five is the field strength in basketball, not water polo. Option B is wrong but is the standard trap, since six is the number of field players alone; the question asks for the whole side in the water, so the goalkeeper must be counted. Option D is wrong because eleven belongs to football, cricket and hockey, not to water polo. A match is played in four quarters of eight minutes of actual playing time, a team must shoot within a fixed possession period, and players use the eggbeater kick to stay upright with their hands free. Water polo was introduced for men at the Paris Olympics of 1900, making it the first team sport of the modern Games, and the women entered at Sydney in 2000.

The correct answer is C, eight. The American swimmer won eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics of 2008, the most won by any athlete at one Games, and he closed his career as the most decorated Olympian in history with 28 medals, 23 of them gold. Option A is wrong because six is not associated with this record. Option B, seven, is the classic distractor: Mark Spitz of the United States won seven golds at Munich in 1972, a mark that stood for thirty-six years until Phelps passed it by one in Beijing. Option D is wrong because nine golds at a single Games has never been achieved; Phelps did, however, win nine individual Olympic golds over his whole career. Papers often pair this question with the number of medals Phelps won in total, so remember twenty-eight medals and twenty-three golds together.

The correct answer is B, Lausanne in Switzerland, the city that also hosts the International Olympic Committee and many other world federations. The body was founded in 1908 in London during that year's Olympic Games, as the Federation Internationale de Natation, and the shortened form FINA stayed in use until it was renamed World Aquatics in 2023. Option A is wrong because Monaco houses World Athletics, a frequent source of confusion in this question. Option C is wrong because Paris, although the home of several sports bodies in the past, is not the seat of the aquatic federation. Option D is wrong but tempting, since London is where the federation was founded; the founding city and the present headquarters are different, and papers test precisely that gap. World Aquatics governs swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving.

The correct answer is C, rowing. World Aquatics recognises six disciplines, namely swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving. Rowing is played on water but is governed by a separate international body, World Rowing, long known as FISA, and its Olympic events are listed under rowing, not aquatics. Option A is wrong as a choice because water polo is one of the six and was in fact the first team sport at the modern Olympic Games, in Paris in 1900. Option B is wrong because artistic swimming, called synchronised swimming until a recent change of name, has been an Olympic aquatic event since Los Angeles in 1984. Option D is wrong because high diving, from platforms far higher than the Olympic ten metres, is a World Aquatics discipline contested at the World Championships although not at the Olympics. Canoeing, kayaking and sailing are likewise outside aquatics.

The correct answer is B, swimming. Murlikant Petkar won the 50 metre freestyle at the 1972 Heidelberg Paralympic Games, and that remained India's only Paralympic gold for thirty-two years. Petkar, a former soldier disabled by bullet wounds in the 1965 war, also set a world record in the event. Option A is wrong but is the natural guess, because athletics has since given India several Paralympic golds, beginning with Devendra Jhajharia in the javelin at Athens in 2004; those came later. Option C is wrong because shooting brought India its first Paralympic shooting gold much later, at Tokyo in 2021. Option D is wrong because badminton entered the Paralympic programme only at the Tokyo Games. The question is often set beside its Olympic counterpart, where India's first individual gold came in shooting, through Abhinav Bindra at Beijing in 2008.