A few months ago we looked at what are the longest lived Olympic records in track & field athletics. As we noted at the time, Olympic records can only be set in certain sports. At the Summer Games, this includes athletics (track & field), swimming, shooting, weightlifting, archery, and Olympic bests are usually considered now in rowing and canoeing. At the Winter Games, the measured sports are speed skating and short-track speed skating, with the best jumps measured in ski jumping.

Let’s look at swimming today and see what the longest-lived Olympic records are in this sport. And we have to make some assumptions, as we commonly do. We’re going to consider marks that have lasted the most Olympics, because the gap from 1936-48 and 1912-20 artificially made records last longer that were set in 1912 or 1932-36. So we’ll consider Olympics Between (OlyBT below) and Years Between (YrsGap below). Also, some marks were set a number of Olympics ago but are still the best on record. We’ll consider all of those to last until 2016 (at a minimum, that is true).

Given that, here are all the swimming Olympic records that have lasted 12+ years or 3 or more Olympics. Note that swim records turn over relatively quickly, and do not last as long as the track & field records, in general. The men’s list is first.

Now for the women’s list, again for all records lasting 12+ years or 3 or more Olympics.

And now we’ll go event-by-event, looking at the longest-lived Olympic swimming records in each event – men followed by the women.