WHAT IS ARTISTIC SWIMMING?
ARTISTIC SWIMMING
Artistic Swimming – formerly called synchronised swimming or ‘synchro’ for short – is an Olympic sport that combines the skills from swimming, gymnastics, diving and dance to create spectacular routines of acrobatic moves in the water to music.
An artistic swimming routine can be performed as a solo, duet, trio, team or combo (a ‘combo’ includes up to ten athletes performing a combination of solo, duet, trio and team elements within one routine). The routines involve teamwork, synchronisation and artistic flair and are choreographed to music. Swimmers can hear the music through underwater speakers, whilst counting to the beat.
strength, endurance, flexibility, artistry, grace and precision
Artistic swimming is a very demanding sport that requires great strength, endurance, flexibility, artistry, grace and precise timing and synchronisation with your fellow team mates. All this whilst holding your breath underwater for up to two minutes, often whilst upside down! A test on all the Olympic sports before the London 2012 Olympic Games concluded that artistic swimmers ranked second only to long distance runners in aerobic capacity.
Traditionally, artistic swimming has been a predominantly female sport, however, the mixed pair event has now been added allowing men to compete on the world stage at certain events. We are lucky to have a boy performing with Seymour, and hope to encourage more.
