We all know there are four strokes – and basically only three because who swims fly? But this controversial stroke is making a comeback and it turns out there is more to fly than you might expect.
The starting point? Totnes, in Devon, a hippie haven on the banks of the River Dart, where OSS muse, Kari Furre, set up the Butterfly Club in January which now meets twice a week to practise ahead of a one-mile sea swim in September 2024. The idea first emerged out of Kari’s plans to celebrate her 70th birthday with 70 minutes of butterfly – which sadly never happened due to COVID-19 restrictions in force at the time.
Undeterred, Kari started to swim lengths of fly at her local pool. ‘You feel really visible to begin with,’ she admits. ‘People have such strong opinions about fly and you don’t want to look like a t***. So I started going to general swim sessions at first, when most people are at work and all the kids are at school – or the last 15 minutes of a lane session when you don’t have to fight for space. But I soon found someone else who wanted to swim fly – and then someone else, and then someone else, until I decided to set up the Butterfly Club.’
But why? I ask. ‘Well, I’m in my seventies,’ Kari explains. ‘I’ve been swimming – and teaching other people to swim – for many years. So you have to find a reason to keep going to the pool.’ Kari likens butterfly to yoga. ‘We’re all used to swimming junk lengths of front crawl up and down the pool while thinking about something else, but I wanted to be more in the moment, focusing on my technique – and I love the feeling of strength as you swoop your arms along.’
Really? Swooping arms? ’Yes!’ Kari insists, before explaining her mission to ‘soften’ this much maligned stroke. ‘There’s more to butterfly than swimming two lengths and emptying the pool. The secret is to recover at the same time.’ Just like yoga, this means learning to slow down, control your breath and activate core strength.
‘The secret is to recover at the same time,’ Kari explains. Just like yoga, this means learning to slow down, control your breath and activate core strength.
Mark Johansen
For anyone intrigued about the origins of this controversial stroke, I recommend you save yourself a lot of time (and a potential headache) as it turns out that various athletes discovered various parts of the stroke at various points during the 20th Century – but you can find a deep dive into the history here and a piece about the difficulty of tracing the origins here. What can be said is that fly emerges out of breaststroke, where the forward-arm extension provides a chance to recover mid stroke. ‘Fly is the same,’ Kari tells me. ‘Imagine pulling a cloak around you – slowly – with both arms spread out wide.’
Kari inspired me to get in touch with two butterfly experts. Mark Johansen is a Triple Crown swimmer who completed a fly relay of the English Channel (EC) in 2015 and led a fly relay of Lake Geneva in 2018. More recently, in 2023, Helen Betley became the first person to swim a full length of Windermere on each stroke – and she’s currently training to complete a fly EC in 2026, which she describes as ‘one of the ultimate challenges’.
Mark and Helen draw a strong distinction between club and distance fly. ‘I’d only swum a few lengths of fly in my teen years,’ Mark explains, ‘so it was an alien stroke to me when I was asked to join the Serpentine EC fly relay team. I felt tempted to turn the offer down, but thought to myself, Why not? Absolutely one of the best decisions I’ve ever made!’
‘Training towards the EC relay meant having a couple of fly lessons to get a grip on “distance fly” which is often described as the 5th stroke, but once I got a feel for it, I gradually increased the distance until I was doing 3km in a 25m pool within about 6 weeks. Is it a difficult stroke? I understand why people think so, but once you slow it down, it starts to become easy – and no more dangerous than backstrokers who don’t know how to sight and poor breaststroke technique with arms and legs all over the place!’
Kari Furre
Is it a difficult stroke? I understand why people think so, but once you slow it down, it starts to become easy – and no more dangerous than backstrokers who don’t know how to sight and poor breaststroke technique with arms and legs all over the place!
Helen made a surprising discovery of butterfly while pregnant with her daughter back in 2016. ‘I found breathing on front crawl became much harder as I couldn’t rotate so easily and my body position was lower in the water,’ she recalls. ‘I’m not sure how the idea for a long butterfly swim came about, but I liked the idea of trying something more challenging than just another freestyle swim.’
Helen describes her sense of disbelief at the start of this process. She recalls a training camp with Sylvain Estadieu (‘the flying Frenchman’) who completed a fly EC in 2013. ‘I asked him, How do you keep going without your arms falling off? And he said, Don’t use your arms to propel you forwards. Throw your arms forward and down to start the wave, but the strength has to come from your core.’
Don’t use your arms to propel you forwards. Throw your arms forward and down to start the wave, but the strength has to come from your core.
But in 2018, Helen swam a full length of Windermere – 17km of butterfly – in just under eight hours. Since then, she’s become the first person to swim fly from Jersey to France – and she’s also completed the Bonifacio Strait, from Sardinia to Corsica, but without a stroke observer to make it an official swim.
‘There are some things to be aware of when you’re starting out,’ Helen warns me. ‘Butterfly is much slower then crawl’ – so, for example, Helen is anticipating 16 hours for her EC swim in 2026, compared with 12-and-a-half for her freestyle swim in 2012. ‘There is also the risk of an increased heart rate and inhaling large amounts of water in rough conditions,’ she adds, ‘but there’s no doubt that fly has opened up a whole new world of swimming for me.’
So, if you’re bored of swimming the same lengths, week in, week out, why not join Kari’s mission to soften the stroke, team up with a couple of likeminded swimmers at your local pool and start practising together? Who knows what might happen? Mark even met his wife through butterfly: ‘She swam the Dart 10K fly while I was training for the EC fly relay in 2015. We noticed each other’s social media posts – and the rest is history!’