Swimming
Competition Introduction
At the Deaflympics, swimming includes competitive swimming only.
Competitive swimming is a sport where athletes swim set distances in pools using four prescribed strokes—freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly - competing for time
Basic Rules
Competition follows the same international rules as for hearing people.
Unique Aspects of Deaf Sports
The difference from competitive swimming for hearing people lies in start signals. Since these cannot be communicated by sound, start lights provide visual start signals.
Start lights signal starts to athletes through colour changes: (1) mount starting block “white”, (2) take your mark “red”, (3) start “blue”.
Event
25th Summer Deaflympics Tokyo 2025
Men/Women
50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 200m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 800m freestyle,1500m freestyle, 50m backstroke, 100m backstroke, 200m backstroke, 50m breaststroke, 100m breaststroke, 200m breaststroke, 50m butterfly, 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, 400m individual medley, 4×200m freestyle relay
Men/Women/Mixed
4×100m freestyle relay, 4×100m medley relay
