0 a sports competition, especially a swimming race, in which each competitor can use any style or method they choose:
1 a sports competition, esp. a swimming race, in which each competitor can choose to use any style or method, or a style of swimming in which you lie on your front and move first one arm then the other over your head, while kicking your legs
Imagine that our speakers were swimmers in an offshore current - some doing freestyle, others the backstroke, some moving with the current, others moving against it.
In swimming, the women gold medal winners of 1979 in freestyle and butterfly would have taken the men's gold medals just 10 years before.
This swimming event used freestyle swimming, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events).
This freestyle wrestling competition consisted of a single-elimination tournament, with a repechage used to determine the winner of two bronze medals.
During the same year she also got a silver medal for 50 meter freestyle and four gold ones (one of which was for medley).
She also won the team gold and bronze medals in the 4100 m freestyle relay and 4100 m medley relay events, respectively.
She posted 6th in the freestyle and 4th in the backstroke, but took bronze in the medley, her first medal of a major international event.
There she competed in three events, the 200m freestyle, 100m backstroke and 200m individual medley.
