JACQUELINE SIMONEAU
Q How did you get into the sport?
A When I was little I did a whole bunch of sports. I did hockey, baseball, soccer, tennis — a whole bunch of sports. And then I got into the water sports, and I was doing swimming, water polo and diving.
One day, on the diving board, I was seeing synchronized swimming across the pool and I just wanted to try it ever since and I’ve loved it.
Q What is your biggest strength as an athlete?
A One of my strengths is probably my work ethic. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, so I like getting things done right, so I’d repeat something a thousand times until I get that one time right.
Q You’ve played a lot of sports, obviously. How does synchronized swimming compare to those sports in terms of athleticism?
A Synchronized swimming is a whole bunch of sports mixed into one. Even today, I still do diving, gymnastics, trampoline, speed swimming. We have a lot of coordination skills that we have to work on, we do weight training, running. So it’s a whole bunch of sports that’s mixed into one. And we have to kind of transfer it all into the water while holding our breath upside down. So it’s a lot of fun, actually. I like complicated things that are mixed together.
Q Synchronized swimming is one of those judged sports like figure skating, where sometimes it is tough to see countries that haven’t been on the podium come up to beat other countries who typically are on the podium. How are you looking at that heading into Rio?
A I’d say that our jobs as athletes is to focus solely on our performance. Our goal when we’re training is to better ourselves every single day, to have a goal and surpass that, every single week, and let the coaches focus on all the judged part of the sport. As athletes, we just focus on swimming.