page_title: Sport in Russia
section_title: Swimming and diving
hierarchical_section_title: Sport in Russia / Swimming and diving
caption_attribution_description: English: Number of swimming pools in Russia, at the end of each year from 1993 to 2013. Русский: Количество плавательных бассейнов в России в конце каждого года периода 1993 — 2013 гг. Источник данных: Федеральная служба государственной статистики.
context_page_description: The most popular sport in Russia is football. According to Yandex search analysis results rating of the most popular sports among Russians: "Football topped the list of the most popular sports in Russia" with 5 to 10 million requests. Ice hockey came in second with handball, basketball, futsal, boxing, auto racing, volleyball, athletics, tennis and chess rounding out the top ten rankings. Other popular sports include bandy, biathlon, figure skating, weightlifting, gymnastics, wrestling, martial arts, rugby union, and skiing.
  The Soviet Union competed in the Olympic Games for the first time at the 1952 Summer Olympics. Soviet and later Russian athletes never finished below fourth place in the number of gold and total medals collected at the Summer Olympics in which they competed. Russia has the most medals stripped for doping violations, the most of any country, four times the number of the runner-up, and nearly a third of the global total. The Russian team was partially banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics due to the state-sponsored doping scandal.
context_section_description: Swimming is mostly an elite sport for most Russians, however before the dissolution of the USSR, Swimming was an institutionalized and recreational sport and excelled in the Olympic Games competing against East Germany in the total swimming medals table. Russia has not achieved the same success as that of the Soviet Union nevertheless there has still been a few notable Russian swimmers that excelled, Alexander Popov, a four-time Olympic gold medalist is regarded as one of the greatest sprint freestyle swimmers of all time, and the only male swimmer in history to win four individual Olympic gold medals in freestyle events. Other Notable Russian swimmers in the 1990s and early 2000s include: Denis Pankratov, Yevgeny Sadovyi, Vladimir Pyshnenko, Yury Prilukov, Arkady Vyatchanin, Roman Sludnov, Andrey Grechin. After the 2012 Summer Olympics, Russia's new elite swimmers have shown improved results.
  Diving is also a sport in Russia with a long soviet tradition.
  Russia has dominated synchronized swimming at the Olympic Games and World Championships since the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Notable Olympic champions and synchronized swimmers include: Anastasia Davydova, Anastasia Ermakova, Natalia Ishchenko, Svetlana Romashina, Darina Valitova and Aleksandr Maltsev.
caption: Number of swimming pools in Russia, 1993–2013
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