Artistic swimming

A routine is marked by two panels of five judges and checked by six technical controllers, seated around the pool.

The Elements panel marks the execution of every element. The Artistic Impression panel gives three marks each: for choreography and musicality, for performance, and for transitions. Every mark is from 0 to 10 in quarter points.

Difficulty is not judged. Each team submits a coach card listing its elements and their declared difficulty, and three difficulty controllers verify each one as it happens. An element that does not match its declaration gets a base mark. Three synchronisation controllers count the unequal actions, at 0.1, 0.5 or 3.0 points each. Two of the three must agree to apply a base mark or a major error, and each can ask for one video review per element.

Officials are also appointed to watch the bottom of the pool. Using it to push off costs eight points.

The sport began in North America and Europe, and the United States and Canada won most of the early Olympic titles.

From 2000 it belonged to Russia. Its swimmers won every Olympic gold for twenty years, and Svetlana Romashina retired with seven, more than anyone else in the sport.

China, Japan, Spain and Ukraine have been the nearest challengers. China was second to Russia for much of the 2010s and won both Olympic events in Paris in 2024, in Russia's absence. Ukraine's team won bronze in Tokyo.

Men's artistic swimming is small and growing. Italy's Giorgio Minisini has won world titles in the mixed duet, and men's and mixed events are now on the world championship programme, though not on the Olympic one.

Artistic swimming began as a show. In the early twentieth century the Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman performed in glass tanks on the vaudeville stage and in films, and made swimming to music into something people paid to watch.

Clubs took it up as figure swimming. In Berlin in 1932 a women's club was photographed from above forming a wheel in a wave pool, the kind of pattern the sport still builds today.

The name came from Chicago. Katherine Curtis coached women's water shows there in the 1930s, and a show she staged at the Century of Progress fair of 1933–34 is credited with the term synchronised swimming. Billy Rose's Aquacades of the late 1930s and Esther Williams's films of the 1940s and 1950s made it famous, and fixed in the public mind an image the sport has argued with ever since.

It became a competition. Synchronised swimming joined the first world aquatics championships in 1973 and the Olympic Games in 1984, with a solo and a duet. The Olympic events changed three times before they settled: a team event alone in 1996, then duet and team from 2000, and from 2024 a team that may include men.

There is almost no equipment, and the rules keep it that way. A swimmer wears a swimsuit and a nose clip. Goggles are banned from routines unless approved for medical reasons, and so is anything that might aid speed, buoyancy or endurance.

The nose clip is the sport's one piece of gear and its signature: it lets a swimmer stay upside down without water forcing its way in, and so makes the long inverted sequences possible.

The pool is the rest of it. Routines at the Games are swum in water at least three metres deep, deep enough that no one can stand, and the organisers must provide underwater speakers so the music can be heard below the surface, where most of the counting is done.

The costume rules reach as far as the face. Natural make-up is allowed and theatrical make-up is not, and swimwear must be "dignified and appropriate for athletic competition" — the rules' own phrase, and a fair summary of the argument the sport has been having with itself since the Aquacades.

The sport is governed with swimming by World Aquatics, formerly FINA, and the two largest decisions about it in the last decade were taken by bodies above its own technical committee.

The name came from the general congress. In July 2017 FINA's congress, in which every member federation votes regardless of whether it has a single synchronised swimmer, renamed the sport artistic swimming. FINA's stated reason was to align it with artistic gymnastics and widen its appeal; its executive director said the idea had also come from the IOC. Swimmers protested, and a petition gathered nearly 11,000 signatures, but the vote stood.

The men came from the IOC. On 22 December 2022 it approved men in the Olympic team, up to two in eight, after a campaign led by athletes such as Bill May, who had won the first mixed duet world title in 2015. No man was selected for Paris in 2024.

The judging. Until 2023 difficulty was itself one of the judges' marks, and a mark given on impression is hard to check. The scoring system of 2023 was built to make it checkable: every element's difficulty is declared on a coach card and verified by controllers with video review, and the federation's stated aim was "objective and detailed measurement". It is the move diving made with its difficulty tables.

The name. The rename of 2017 was decided by a congress of delegates from every aquatic sport, and its critics within the sport said it reduced their event to a show. FINA said it would not revert.

The men. Men could swim at world championships from 2015 and could not at the Games until 2024. The change was made, but in its narrowest form: two places in a team of eight, and no Olympic men's or mixed event.

Russia. Russia won every Olympic gold from 2000 to 2020, twelve in all, the last two under the name of the Russian Olympic Committee. It was absent from Paris 2024, and China won both events.

The base mark. Under the 2023 system an element that does not match its declaration gets its minimum value. In an open letter in 2024 a world championship athlete called the system "disrespectful to the athletes' work", arguing that a single missed movement in a hybrid of twenty is punished as heavily as missing all of them.

Execution against difficulty. The same letter argued that judges use too little of the scale — marks "mostly float between 6.75 and 8.5" — so that declared difficulty decides results. Whether the reform has made the sport more objective or only more predictable is the argument now.

Men at the Games. Two places in a team of eight, and no man selected in 2024. Whether a men's or mixed Olympic event follows is open.

The name. It has stuck. Whether it has changed how the sport is seen is harder to say.