Breaststroke: Some people love it, and for others, there’s no greater punishment. No other stroke divides swimmers like breaststroke does, and even among the experts themselves, there is a division: There are the sprinters, who would gladly plow through 50 or 100m, and then there are the 200m experts, who would rather elegantly glide in and out of the water like a needle going through cloth, bobbing up and down along the lane. In order to swim the 200m breaststroke with both beauty and speed, these swimmers have to keep one trick in mind: the right stroke rate at the right time.

Swimming is an individual sport: It's just you standing on the block. No one can swim the race for you. But outside the pool, swimmers are everything but alone. They have their teammates all around them and their families cheering them on from the sidelines. Even for the best swimmers in the world, it’s hard to be successful without support. Three-time Olympic Champion Ranomi Kromowidjojo, for example, shows how a loving and supporting family can lead to greatness.

“Swimmers have a need for speed”, Bronte Campbell tells us, while we are talking to the Olympic and World Champion about what motivates a swimmer. “You always want to be faster, it’s never enough. You want to push the boundaries to the next level”, she says. This inner “need for speed” keeps her striving for more. The medals and titles that sometimes come with it are secondary for the 23-year-old Australian. “Definitely getting faster is more important to me.”

Benjamin Bilski is a busy man. His life consists of 17 to 18 hours of work per day, business meetings all around the world and the responsibility of having a company with more than 150 employees. Normally, interviews with him have a five-to-ten-minute slot in his schedule, but today he takes his time. We want to talk to him about something that formed his character like nothing else: swimming.

When a new athlete enters the world stage of swimming and performs exceptionally well, the competition tries to figure out the newcomer’s secret. Rivals will analyze the swimmer’s every move, trying to figure out what makes him or her so much faster and why no one can get ahead.

Chad le Clos is back where he belongs: on top of the podium. The South African star swimmer is collecting medals again at the Commonwealth Games in Australia. Something he doesn’t take for granted since his bitter defeat at the 2016 Olympic Games. The key moment in overcoming his demons from Rio happened less than one year ago.

For cyclists, measuring force is an everyday part of training. Cyclists can use gadgets to calculate the force applied to a bicycle pedal when in motion, wattage being one of the most important factors in the results. For swimmers, strength and force measurements could be just as useful, but how force is exerted in the water isn’t as clear as in cycling. How much energy does a swimmer use during an arm pull? In which direction does the energy go? What kind of effect does it have on the swimmer’s performance? A Finnish startup is asking exactly those questions, and finding the answers in a new technology that’s barely larger than a box of Tic Tacs.

David Marsh is one of the most respected and successful swimming coaches worldwide. The 60-year-old American coached around 50 Olympians from various nations and is currently head coach of  the "Team Elite". Olympic gold medalists Ryan Lochte and Anthony Ervin, among others, trust his guidance. At the Olympic Games, Marsh was part of  Team USA coaching for four times, in Rio he was even named  head coach of the women’s swimming team. We talked to the top coach about  US swimmers always managing to be on the top of the podium at the Olympics, and what it means to be a swimming coach today.

Without a doubt Adam Peaty is one of the most impressive swimmers of our time. During the past four years he lifted breaststroke swimming up on a new level. One of his most remarkable swims: The 50m semi-final of the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, where he broke the 26-second-barriere for the first time in swimming history. Let’s take a look at how he did that.

It's this magical lane in the middle of the pool, reserved only for the fastest. It's where stars are born, medals are won and tears are shed, when some outsider on another lane hits the wall first. But what's it like to live your life in the fast lane? And how do you get there?