Finswimming


There is another branch of swimming called as finswimming. Shavarsh found his talent in this branch of swimming and he was right. He competed in this category and won world championship 17 times. He broke the world record 11 times in the same category. If you don’t know what finswimming is then you should know that the only thing which is common between regular swimming and finswimming is the waters.

Different From Swimming

Finswimming is a specific swimming event where the participants swim almost under the surface of the swimming pool. To ease the process they are allowed to use a snorkel and large flipper that turns them into a mermaid-athletes. With the help of fin, they are able to propel through the water. The athletes use four types of techniques in finswimming that divides finswimming into four categories.

Types Of Fin-Swimming

The four types that define finswimming are Surface swimming, Bi-Fins swimming, Apnoea swimming, and Immersion swimming. They all are different as in Surface swimming the swimmers wear a mask, snorkel, and monofins and stay at the surface of the water. In bi-Fins Swimming, the swimmer also stays at the bottom of the surface but use a mask, snorkel, and a pair of fins. The other two are…

Other Two Types

In Apnoea Finswimming, where it involves the swimmers holding their breath underwater and us a mask and mono-fin. This type is very difficult and requires extra hard work and training to be successful. Then comes the Immersion swimming similar to Apnoea Finswimming where they also use a mask and mono-fin with a breathing apparatus. But what was that episode that changed Shavarsh’s life forever?

After His Peak


We all know that athletes have a very small span of a career in which they try to achieve as much possible. Even Shavarsh was struggling as he was getting older. He was at its peak of his career between 1965-1975 but after that period was over his career started to go upside down. Everybody thought his career is far from over but that’s not entirely true. You’ll see why?

Far From Over?

Shavarsh career was not going the way it should be because of the old age. An athlete has a very short career and Shavarsh was proving that. Unlike in his prime where he used to qualify for every competition but now he was struggling to qualify even once. In the year 1976, the Soviet Union National Team noticed the same downfall in him and decided to leave him out of the team. His fame almost ended but something happened and he was the champion again.