Competitive synchronized swimming, often called
“synchro,” involves routines performed to “synchronize” with and interpret music in the performance of a
variety of swimming strokes and complex body actions. Routines may be performed as solo, duet, or team
(up to eight members).
History
The elements of synchro—swimming strokes, figures,
sculling, and floating—are as old as swimming itself.A
bas relief from the Assyrian palace of Nimroud, about
880 B.C.E., portrays underwater swimmers, and old
Japanese wood-block prints show men performing figures such as somersaults and demonstrating a position
much like modern synchro’s “ballet leg.”“Scientific and
Ornamental Swimming” for men was found in 1892 in
England, with Canada beginning, in 1898, a similar
men’s competition, “Stunts and Strokes.” At the turn of
the century, women had floating pattern groups in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.
Water show activities did underlie the development
and popularization of synchro, beginning in 1907 with
exhibitions by Annette Kellerman (?–1975), who performed in a glass tank in countries around the world.
Katharine Curtis (?–1980) developed synchronized
swimming in the United States, experimented, in 1915,
with water figures, and added music. She extended this,
in 1923 for her University of Chicago classes, to combinations of various “tricks,” strokes, and floats that were
finally “synchronized” to musical beats and measures,
“just as in dancing.” Her students appeared, as the “Kay
Curtis Modern Mermaids,” in the 1933–1934 Chicago
“Century of Progress” Fair, performing three times
daily for audiences of up to 10,000. The term “synchronized swimming” was coined by announcer Norman
Ross to describe those shows.
Competitive development was spurred by Frank
Havlicek, a student in Curtis’s class at Chicago’s Wright
Junior College, who suggested in 1939 that the collegiate routines could form the basis for competitions
between colleges. Rules were drawn up, leading to the
first known competition. The AAU sanctioned it as a
sport in 1940. The first national championship was delayed until 1946. In 1978, United States Synchronized
Swimming, Inc., was formed to govern the sport.
Canada concurrently developed competitive forms
of synchro, beginning in 1951. Both Canada and the
United States helped spread the sport worldwide
through international exhibitions during the 1950s.
Synchronized swimming became an official world
sport in 1954 when the Fédération Internationale de
Natation Amateur (FINA) accepted it as a swimming
“discipline.”
The first truly international competition, held under FINA auspices, was the Pan American Games of
1955 in Mexico City. Synchro was included in the World
Aquatic Championships in 1973 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Its Olympic debut came in Los Angeles, California, in 1984.
Rules and Play
Internationally, competition is held in senior class, junior class (ages 14–17), and by age groups (12 and under, 13–14, and 15–17), as well as in masters programs
for adults 25 and over.
Competition includes three events: figure competition, technical program, and free routine. The figure
competition is similar to a diving competition, where
each competitor performs a set of closely prescribed
movements for one judging award. The technical routine is set to music and contains compulsory actions,
similar to the technical program in ice dance competitions. The free routine is longer, and the athlete has
complete freedom in choosing actions to perform. A
competition must include at least two of the three
events.
In each routine event, two scores—for technical
merit and artistic impression—are awarded by panels
of five to seven judges. Technical merit includes execution, synchronization, and difficulty and counts for 60
percent of the routine’s score. Artistic impression,
which counts for 40 percent, includes choreography,
music interpretation, and manner of presentation.
In figure competition, each athlete is judged individually on four separate figures. Each consists of complex body movements in a specified sequence and design. Actions include spins, twists, somersaults, and
many other special movements that are named for
identification. Rules may vary by nation.
Synchronized swimming is now practiced on every
continent in the world, with more than 60 nations conducting national programs.
The top international competitions, each held every
four years, are the Olympic Games (restricted in 1996
to team events only), the World Aquatic Championships (including solo, duet, and team events), and
the Goodwill Games (solo and duet only). The FINA
World Cup and Junior World Championships are held
every two years.
—DAWN BEAN
Bibliography: Bean, Dawn, ed. (1979–1992) Synchro. Santa
Ana, CA. Gundling, Beulah, and Jill White. (1988) Creative
Synchronized Swimming. Champaign, IL: Leisure Press.
Swan, Margaret, Donald Kane, and Dawn Bean. (1984,
1989) Coaching Synchronized Swimming Effectively.
Champaign,. IL: Human Kinetics.