I agree completely with the author. Synchro-swimming is a real sport, just like synchro-diving is, but please let them lose the make-up and the silly outfits!! Only then will the sport, which now can be watched under water, be taken seriously.
Synchro for Dummies
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4. Are you a fast swimmer?
Um, no. Synchro is about finesse, man, finesse. I wouldn't want to race a speed swimmer, and a speed swimmer wouldn't want to try holding her legs above water.
5. What's your favorite synchro spoof?
This is a dumb question only because it is so easy. There is but one spoof that, uh, holds any water in the world of synchro. It is, of course, the 1984 "Saturday Night Live" skit in which Martin Short (in a lifejacket, though he's standing in three feet of water) and Harry Shearer point to each other with a sense of profound recognition as they chant, "I know you, I know you." I predict that this parody never, ever will be surpassed, however long humans remain on this watery planet.
SMART QUESTIONS
1. How do you train?
It's a combination of distance and sprint swimming (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly, mixed with underwater laps), strength training (weight training, Pilates), land conditioning (running) and drills (doing routines, and parts of routines, over and over and over again, until they're perfect, like in classical-music study).
2. What's with the incessant smiling?
Amen. What is with the incessant smiling? The history of synchro goes back to Esther Williams's 1940s Hollywood movies, in which all the women (read: people with few choices beyond homemaker, nurse or teacher) smiled and batted their eyelashes as they stroked feebly through the shallow ends of sound-studio pools. Some evolution is needed. After all, the ancient games featured things like naked wrestlers, and you don't see too much of that in the Olympic venues today.
The sport trivializes itself with silly traditions like the plastered smile and the heavy waterproof makeup. If you must keep the decorative suits, fine. But the only dignified athletic face is a straight one—until the competition is over.
3. Why isn't that American girl wearing noseclips like everybody else?
I know! Christina Jones, one half of the American duet that finished fifth this week in Beijing, does not wear anything to keep the water from going up her nose while she's upside-down underwater. She's one of only a few swimmers known to do this, but it's not unheard of.
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