This young woman swam quite sleekly,like a seal almost,and even with her maximum exposure on her breathing cycle, there really isn't that much athlete to see in this swimming stroke; it seems to me that 90 percent of the athelete's body is hidden by the water almost the entire time. The lens did a good job of achieving accurate autofocus,and the stabilized panning from the engaged VR system allowed me to get a fairly steady panning action with ample camera support to show the slight motion blur due to the 1/180 second shutter speed. The f/2.5 performance from the lens looks pretty good.