The sisters Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina Alexandri of Austria performed a synchronized swimming duet to the Michael Jackson song “Smooth Criminal” on Monday at the Rio Games.
James Hill for The New York Times
RIO DE JANEIRO — Down in the pool, the Australian synchronized swimming duo was performing a three-minute whistle-stop tour of the animals of the outback — kookaburras, emus, centipedes — to music from “Crocodile Dundee.” In the stands, the American mother-daughter duo of Ruth and Emily Thunstrum was trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on.
“There was definitely a bird of some kind,” Emily said.
“I think there was a crocodile,” Ruth answered. “You should know — you spent that time in Australia.”
You do not have to be from someplace other than Australia to be mystified by synchronized swimming, a sport that lies in the corner of the Twilight Zone where Kabuki opera meets advanced underwater survival. It may look as if the athletes are simply gesticulating emphatically, flinging themselves around in improbable aquatic configurations, and executing shockingly complex leg movements while upside down and not breathing. But that’s not the half of it.
Each synchro routine also has an elaborate theme, and each theme must be conveyed with grace, precision and dramatically relevant facial gestures, as well as moves like the catalina rotation (rotate your body while holding your leg, ballet-style, in the air) and the vertical descent (descend, straight upside down, until your toes are submerged). The athletes also have to do each move at the same time and make it seem easy, fun and not hard at all, even when they are heaving, hypoxic and about to pass out.
Judged for their artistic as well as athletic skills, synchro swimmers put considerable effort into their themes and choreography. The stories can celebrate a nation’s history and culture; evoke classic tales, ballets, songs and myths; mimic natural phenomena or abstract principles; and, in the case of “Fury,” the American duet’s free routine theme in Rio, convey a mood itself.
Sometimes the themes are obvious and careworn: Every competition seems to include at least one “Swan Lake” (hello, Austria). They can also be hideously ill conceived.
In 1996, for instance, the French synchro team picked an unusual subject for the Olympics: the Holocaust. The routine began with the athletes goose-stepping on the deck like Nazis and ended with them being rounded up and sent to the (figurative) gas chamber in the pool. After an international outcry, the team switched to a different topic, although its trainer, Odile Petit, tried to argue that the routine was no more offensive than the one “depicting torture in Chile” performed by the national ice-dancing team.
Lolita Anansova and Anna Voloshyna of Ukraine in a synchro duet Monday. Despite all the attention swimmers lavish on the themes of their routines, even the judges can’t always work out what they are.
James Hill for The New York Times
One strange feature of the sport is that, despite all the attention lavished on the themes, even the judges cannot always work out what they are.
“Not all the judges get the story,” said Irene Hawes, a longtime synchro judge.
Take “The Firebird” suite by Stravinsky, she said. “There’s the phoenix rising and the battle and all that. A lot of people don’t know that.”
She continued, “I remember one routine was meant to be a tumbleweed, and the athletes were rolling along the deck, and people were wondering what they were doing.” She figured it out, she said, only when the competition ended and “the country handed out a flier.”
Still, synchro athletes said, the narratives help both them and the spectators.
“It’s much more interesting to watch a routine that has a specific theme in it,” said Bianca Hammett, captain of the Australian synchro team.
She said the team’s free routine was “a journey through the unique flora and fauna of Australia.” It features both the obvious (crocodiles: athletes’ legs snapping open and shut) and the not.
“We have a lizards’ dance party,” Hammett said. “We put our hands near our heads, like we’re mimicking lizards.”
Many synchro teams pick themes celebrating their countries. The Spanish duo in Rio is doing a Flamenco routine while the Brazilians are depicting natural life in the Amazon. Britain is representing snakes (always popular, because of their watery sinuousness); the Kazakhs, ravens. The Swiss theme is “Orient bazaar,” whatever that means, while the French, with renewed Gallic ambition, have selected “Africa.” The Russians, who almost always win, are modestly pretending to be mermaids.
Another challenge: The choreography has to fit the music.
“If you used a ballet but did, like, robot-type movements, we would see it as strange,” Hawes said. “Same thing if it has a crescendo and you’re doing absolutely nothing but laying on your back. If it has a winding-type of sound, which wants spinning, and you’re doing marches — these are factors.”
Every judge has pet peeves. Many people did not care for Canada’s team program at the London Games in 2012, which looked more like an Esther Williams extravaganza than a sports routine and which Hawes denounced as “gross.”
“It had to do with their headgear — large swimming caps covered with plastic flowers — their extreme facial moves, and the spitting of water,” Hawes said.
As for Linda Loehndorf, another judge — spare her the circus programs.
“It’s like, ugh,” she said. “I get it. You’re a clown. You don’t need to stick your tongue out at me.”
And then there are particularly memorable performances. Last year, for instance, China unveiled an electrifying routine that at first seemed destined for cliché corner.
“I thought, Oh, jeez, not that again — ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’” Loehndorf said. “It’s something you hear over and over again. But they managed to tell the whole story in four and a half minutes, and I got it completely. It was a goosebumps-on-the-arms sort of thing.”
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