Watching artistic swimming? 6 questions about the Olympic sport, answered

NPR is in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For more of our coverage from the games head to our latest updates.

SAINT-DENIS, France — Let’s get one thing straight: There’s so much more to artistic swimming — often called synchronized swimming — than synchronization.

Blending music and ballet movement, the sport demands a tremendous level of acrobatic and aerobic skill to be able to flip or strike a pose in the air — without touching the bottom of the pool — or to hold one's breath while submerged upside down.

There's more to it than breath, leg and arm work. For all the stamina required, the swimmers make it look easy. Teammates often emerge from the water in unison with coordinating theatrical facial expressions — a choreography that stays in sync even while the swimmers are submerged.

Medals for the artistic swimming events will be given out on Wednesday and Saturday.

If you're just tuning into the sport, here are some things to know.

What are the basics of Olympic competition?

At the Paris Olympics, there are two events: duet and team.

The duet event: For the duets, which feature a pair of swimmers, there’s one “technical” routine and one “free” routine. Technical requires teams to hit five listed movements. In the free, there’s a lot more freedom, as the name suggests. While there are no compulsory moves, and restrictions on music and choreography are dropped, the challenge here is imagination and creativity.  

The team event: In additional to the technical and free routines, teams comprising eight swimmers are also scored on an acrobatic routine — a recent addition to the Olympic program. This routine asks teams to complete seven acrobatic movements, of which there are four categories, including airborne and balance acts.

For each event, the team with the best combined score from all routines wins.
 

What else is new to the competition?

This Olympics has introduced to the judging system a declared degree of difficulty. Teams can play it safe or they take the risk and go for the challenge. Many competitors say the new difficulty rule makes the competition fairer and eliminates subjectivity.

The relatively higher difficulty score in Team USA’s free routine on Wednesday boosted them from fourth place to second, behind China. After swimmers reinterpreted Michael Jackson’s moonwalk while upside down, syncing to his hit Smooth Criminal, the Americans leapt past Spain and Japan.

How do they stay afloat?

The swimmers use the egg-beater method, an efficient way to tread water by pedaling legs in alternating circles.

The technique keeps them upright in the pool during lifts (when swimmers are lifted into the air), throws (the aerial launching of swimmers) and catches (catching their teammate on their fall back down).

To pull off all kinds of underwater movements, artistic swimmers have to have a large lung capacity and controlled breathing. Most artistic swimmers can hold their breath for around three minutes.

How do they stop the water from getting up their noses? Nose plugs, basically. A small clip of plastic or wire wrapped in a rubber coating stops water from entering the nostrils during underwater movements.

How do they keep their hair out of their face?

They go through a lot of gelatin. The clear material keeps swimmers’ tresses looking shiny and styled in place and also protects hair from the damaging chlorine.

How do they sync with the music underwater?

Two words: Underwater speakers

Where are the men?

Male artistic swimmers have long competed in the lower level competitions. But as rules restricted men from the sport, female teams rose in popularity. The first official artistic swimming competitions debuted at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games — without men.

This year, men were allowed to compete in the Olympic team event (up to two men) for the first time. But none of the 10 teams competing have men participating. The duet remains a women-only event.

Although the door is now open to men, American male artistic swimmer Bill May —who was expected to make the roster (and history) — didn’t make the U.S. team.

He did, however, earn the honors of striking the staff to mark the start of an artistic swimming team free event this week.