High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The men`s 50 metre freestyle event at the 2008 Olympic Games took place between August 14 and 16, at the Beijing National Aquatics Center. This swimming event is freestyle swimming, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events). Nearly all swimmers use the front crawl or a variant of that stroke. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consists entirely of a single length of the pool.