For 40 years, artistic swimming has been part of the Summer Olympics.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, it had the opportunity to look different than it ever had before at the world’s most prestigious sporting event.
The sport, formerly referred to as synchronized swimming until 2017, underwent a significant shift in December 2022, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave its approval for World Aquatics to allow men to participate in artistic swimming at the upcoming 2024 Games.
The effects of that decision, however, won’t be apparent to the millions of viewers across the globe tuning into the Olympics this month.
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When artistic swimming began Monday, there were no men competing, nor will there be over the course of the Olympics. Of the 96 athletes representing 18 countries in artistic swimming at the 2024 Games, none of them are males.
Here’s a look at the history of artistic swimming, male participation in it and why there aren’t any men competing in the sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics:
Are men allowed in artistic swimming?
Indeed, men are allowed to compete in artistic swimming in the Olympics.
Their road to get there was a lengthy one.
The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the governing body for competitive sports in the United States at the time, first recognized the sport in 1945. Though a lack of interest prompted male-only synchronized swimming competitions to stop after a few years, men continued to participate in the sport at the lower level for decades.
Over time, women overwhelmingly made up the sport’s participants. Even as it rose in popularity and earned acceptance from FINA (now World Aquatics), its push for inclusion in the Olympics was regularly met with resistance. IOC president Avery Brundage thought little of the sport, reportedly referring to it as “aquatic vaudeville,” and had even considered eliminating all women’s sports from the Olympics as a cost-cutting measure.
By the 1970s, Title IX was signed into law and with it came a broader push for more female representation in sports, including at the Olympic level. Artistic swimming became a part of that larger movement and at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, it made its debut as a female-only sport.
Men, however, remained excluded from international competitions until 2015, when FINA added mixed duets to that year’s world championships. In 2022, the IOC reversed its longstanding policy and allowed up to two males to compete on each country’s eight-member team while still preventing them from taking part in the duet event.
“The inclusion of men in Olympic artistic swimming was once considered the impossible dream,” said American artistic swimmer Bill May at the time of the IOC ruling. “This proves that we should all dream big. The male athletes have endured. Now, through their perseverance and the help and support of so many, all athletes may stand alongside each other equally, reaching for Olympic glory.”
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Why are there no men in artistic swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics?
Though the IOC announcement in December 2022 was hailed as a victory for inclusion in artistic swimming, little changed about the sport for the 2024 Paris Olympics. What seemed like a potentially transformative move in theory wasn’t in practice, at least for the first go-around in the Olympics.
None of the 10 countries in the artistic swimming team event—each consisting of eight athletes and one alternate representing them in Paris—has a male on their roster.
“This should have been a landmark moment for the sport,” World Aquatics said in a statement in June after rosters were finalized. “We understand that it was always going to be a challenge for men to earn a spot on a team in time for Paris 2024, considering that their eligibility was only confirmed 18 months ago, but we were still hopeful that some would succeed.”
The selection process for those teams featured a couple of notable omissions.
The United States roster did not include Bill May, a 45-year-old artistic swimmer who competed at the world championships in 2015, the first year in which men were permitted to do so, and won a gold medal in the mixed duet technical routine. At the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, he was part of a US team that captured a silver medal in the acrobatic routine, becoming the first American male to make the medal podium in a team event at an international competition.
He had worked for 17 years at Cirque du Soleil doing aquatic shows and came out of retirement for the opportunity to make it to the Olympics.
“There has always been that misconception that it’s a female-only sport, or that it’s for wimps, or that it’s not a difficult sport,” May said in 2023. “Anyone that has anything negative to say about the sport — boy, female, anyone. Just try it and you’ll know it’s the most difficult sport in the world.”
Ultimately, though, May was not selected for the Team USA roster.
“Unfortunately, the rules of artistic swimming only allow for eight athletes to swim all three routines,” Adam Andrasko, the chief executive of USA Artistic Swimming, said in a statement to the New York Times in June. “We will continue to celebrate Bill and support male participation across the sport while also celebrating the story of these eight incredible women.”
Two months earlier, Italy left four-time world gold medalist Giorgio Minisini off of its artistic swimming team for the 2024 Paris Games. In April, shortly after he learned of his Olympic fate, Minisini announced he would be retiring following the Italian championships. When explaining his decision at a news conference, he said he preferred “the fear of uncertainty to the certainty of unhappiness.”
“I really wanted the Olympics, and I wanted it so much that I was willing to continue practicing an activity that no longer gave me any pleasure other than knowing that perhaps, at the end of the tunnel, there would be five rings to give meaning to everything,” Minisini said.
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Team USA artistic swimming roster
This month, the US will be competing in the artistic swimming team event at the Olympics for the first time since the 2008 Beijing Games.
Two members of that team will be taking part in the duet event, giving the Americans eight representatives in total, along with one alternate.
Here’s a look at the Team USA roster for artistic swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics:
Team event
- Anita Alvarez
- Jaime Czarkowski
- Megumi Field
- Keana Hunter
- Audrey Kwon
- Jacklyn Luu
- Daniella Ramirez
- Ruby Remati
- Calista Liu*
* Reserve
Duet event
- Jaime Czarkowski
- Megumi Field
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