Artistic Swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics
Gymnastics in the Pool
The swimming races inside the pool might be done, but “Artistic” otherwise known as Synchronized swimming is just getting started! This is one of the world’s favorite niche events. People hardly watch synchronized swimming on a day-to-day basis, but it fascinates us every 4 years. There are 2 gold medals so let’s jump back in the pool.
The Basics
At the Olympic Games, the sport consists of two events: a duet and a team competition. The duet events consist of a technical routine and a free routine. An acrobatic routine is added for the team event. Teams consist of 6 athletes. This event used to be only women, but the IOC changed the team event so it is “mixed”. Each team can have a maximum of 2 men, although there’s no minimum requirement so all the teams are still 6 women, and nothing changed.
The routines are scored by judges who take several criteria into account: level of difficulty, synchronization, execution and artistic impression.
Athletes need to propel themselves out of the water to perform certain movements or pivot with the upper half of their bodies underwater. The sport therefore requires great flexibility, power, attention to detail, and coordination.
The Format
Let’s start with what makes the technical, free, and acrobatic routines different.
Artistic swimming routines at the Olympics are judged by two panels of five judges. One panel judges the execution of various elements in a routine, while the other panel scores artistic impression. In addition, routines are evaluated by two groups of three technical controllers who watch for errors and assign penalties if necessary.
New to the 2024 Games is that artistic swimming routines now must include a required number of various movements, known as elements. There are three types of elements: technical required elements, free hybrid elements, and acrobatic elements. The mandatory total number and distribution of elements depends on the type of routine.
All elements have a predetermined degree of difficulty. Before the competition, each duet/team must submit a "coach card" that lists the exact elements the athletes will perform in their routine, including the order in which they will be performed.
Each of the five judges on the elements panel scores every element of the routine, based on execution, on a scale of 0-10 using 0.25 increments. For each element, the highest and lowest scores are dropped. The remaining three scores are then averaged together and multiplied by the degree of difficulty to calculate the final score for that element.
10 teams and 18 pairs have qualified to be part of the event. There are no preliminary rounds they just do 1 of each routine to determine the medals.
What Countries are Historically Dominant?
Here are the countries that have won multiple medals since 2008:
#1 Russia (8 gold out of 8 possible events)
#2 China (5 silver, 2 bronze)
#3 Spain (3 silver, 1 bronze)
#4 Japan (3 bronze)
#5 Ukraine (2 bronze)
With Russian teams not competing in Paris, this opens the door to a new champion for the first time in a long time.
Schedule
August 5th: Team Technical Routine
August 6th: Team Free Routine
August 7th: Team Acrobatic Routine (Final)
August 9th: Duet Technical Routine
August 10th: Duet Free Routine (Final)