Synchronised swimming: a sport for men or women?

Let's compare with artistic skating: seeing men is no surprise and mixed-gender skating is used for choreographies. Why should artistic swimming be any different? Great stability in the water, power, creativity, breathing, flexibility and so on. The qualities required or developed can be met by both girls and boys, men and women. Just like any sport really.

In my team, we would have not been against having a male team-mate to help us achieve higher lifts ;).

Yannick is a swimmer in a trail-blazing male artistic swimming club: “Paris Aquatique”. When you ask him what he would tell a young boy about his sport, he answers:

"It's great fun to do, every training session is different. It's not just a show; it's a real sport. It instils core values such as sharing, friendliness, helping others and hard work.”

To follow synchronised swimming at Decathlon: 

https://www.instagram.com/natationartistique

https://www.facebook.com/natation.artistique.decathlon/

Even though Yannick's Paris club was set up around 20 years ago, only recently has the sport become more widespread and the swimming world kept up with the times. Over the past five years, we have seen more and more young boys in the clubs. In France, they make up around 200 out of 18,000 participants.

With a shortage of male competitors, prior to 2015 boys only had access to national competitions. Since the World Championships in Kazan, Russia, they can also participate in international competitions in the mixed duet. A move to encourage boys to turn to artistic swimming. European and World Championships, Olympic Games... don your swimsuits fellas, the swimming pools are waiting for you! 

These championships also saw the American Bill May be crowned world champion of this discipline in the duet (with his compatriot Christina Jones).

For swimmer Margaux Caillier: "mixed duets have brought with them a new way of swimming and great new experiences!" .

In the same vein, the FINA (International Swimming Federation) Technical Swimming Committee is currently working on updating the regulations for all disciplines, in order to open up swimming competitions. Because an official competition is always a big event, whether you are a male or female swimmer! These long-awaited changes should offer the mixed duet greater freedom from a choreographic point of view and appropriate scoring to go with it...

If you like the sound of this sport for you or your kids, you might be interested to know that there are nearly 300 clubs in France*... open to both girls and boys. So if you are inspired by Bathing Beauty and Annette Kellerman (who's that? Annette Kellerman, the first woman to participate in a swimming event in France, in 1905. She was even the first to wear a one-piece bathing suit), then there is surely a club not far from where you live that would be delighted to welcome you and/or your children!

*source: FFN, French Swimming Federation.

In 1998, Paris Aquatique swimmers performed a synchronised swimming duet for fun. It was an instant success and so they decided to set up a squad at the club. 20 years later, the squad is mixed—17 of the 45 swimmers are male—and takes part in competitions.