The grace and flexibility of a dancer, strength of a swimmer, power of a gymnast and hypoxic abilities of a deep-sea diver.
Overview
Welcome to Artistic swimming (previously Synchronized Swimming), which has been an Olympic sport since the 1984 LA Olympics.
Australia will compete in two events at Tokyo, the team and duet competitions.
The team event consists of eight athletes, the duet has two, both events are judged over two routines – a technical and free routine.
The Artistic Swimming programme starts with the duet competition on Monday 2 August, with the team event commencing from Friday 6 August.
Artistic Swimming Team
It will be a fresh faced Australian Artistic Swimming team at Tokyo, with only captain Emily Rogers and Amie Thompson competing at a previous Olympics – both featured at Rio 2016.
Rogers and Thompson will compete in the duet and the team events.
There are six Olympic debutants in the team; Alessandra Ho, Rayna Buckle, Hannah Burkhill, Kiera Gazzard, Kirsten Kinash and Rachel Presser.
The Format
Each team competes two routines, a technical and a free routine. In the technical routine, the athletes must complete five designated movements. These movements are very demanding, and they need to be perfectly synchronised.
In the free routine, the choreographers have no restrains and these routines are out of this world.
The judging is a little different between the technical and free routines. In both routines the judges are looking for execution, artistic impression and difficulty.
Execution is how well the athletes are doing the movements, are the movement synchronised, high out of water and well defined. Artistic Impression is the interpretation of the music, choreography, and the way the athletes pull off the performance. Difficulty is judged on how fast, risky, challenging the movements are.
There are 10 Teams:
- Australia
- Russia
- Japan
- China
- Canada
- Egypt
- Italy
- Greece
- Ukraine
- Spain
Learn the lingo
Competitors use techniques such as sculling, in which they move their hands through the water to hold position or move; and an eggbeater kick, in which they do the same with their legs to propel themselves up out of the water. They develop an impressive amount of power in that moment, rising waist-high above the surface. Another technique enables swimmers to turn upside down underwater so that only the lower half of their bodies is visible.
- Highlight – when one athlete is thrown out of the water
- Double Highlight – athletes split up and execute two lifts at the same time.
- Spin – Like a pencil, the athletes keep their legs together while upside down and slowly spin downwards.
- Barracuda – A dynamic movement with the legs, starting underwater, athletes very powerfully propel themself up and then sink.
What’s the Story?
Russia is the raging hot favourite. They are a perfect 10-for-10, winning every Olympic gold medal possible in artistic swimming—duet and team—since the turn of the century.
Competition Schedule
- Where? Tokyo Aquatics Centre
- When? Duet: Monday-Wednesday, August 2-4 | Team: Friday-Saturday, August 6-7
Did You Know
- Donella Freeman (Burridge) and Lisa Critoph were the first Australian synchronised swimmers to compete at the Olympics in 1984. Freeman is still competing to this day in the Masters category.
- In the late 1800s, Australian champion swimmer Annette Kellermann travelled to the UK to attempt to make a living to swim for other people’s entertainment. While making some impact in England it was in America in 1907 that she was credited with popularising synchronised swimming through her performance of the first “water ballet” in a glass tank at the New York Hippodrome, and when she later launched her vaudeville career build as the “Diving Venus”.
- The sport was developed further by American swimmer Katherine Curtis, who had the idea of combining water acrobatics with music. Her students performed at the 1933–34 Chicago Century of Progress Fair, where the announcer, former Olympic swimming gold medallist Norman Ross, coined the term ‘synchronised swimming’.
- Synchronised swimming was later glamorised by American Olympic swimmer turned film star Esther Williams, who performed water ballet in several American movies in the 1930s and 40s. With a rich history of being a delightful spectator sport synchronised swimming was one of the first sporting events to sell out at the Rio Olympics.
Artistic Swimming Snapshot
