‘It’s all about timing — you have to be bang on, a bit like dancing’
its very name, synchronised swimming is something that requires a team. And like any team effort, there’s that great sense of collective achievement.”
Daly happened upon it by accident 10 years ago. Charles had suggested they do something fun together, like swimming, and Ronan — who preferred night clubs and bars to municipal swimming pools — quipped that he would do so if there was a men’s synchronised swimming club there. He fully expected that there wouldn’t be and was shocked when, in fact, there was. “It’s something I couldn’t wiggle out of,” he says, with a chuckle. “So I kept my word and I’m really glad I did.”
Soon Daly found himself going to sessions multiple times a week and he got fitter than he ever could have imagined. “When you look at it on TV, it looks very serene and graceful — a bit like ballet, but upside down — but it requires a lot of work and you really feel you’ve worked out at the end of a session. Your lung capacity improves significantly very quickly.
“And there’s a lot of artistry to it if you’re going to do it properly,” he adds. “It’s all about timing — you have to be bang on, a bit like dancing. If you get the timing wrong, you throw the whole thing off.”
Daly’s team prospered to such a degree they went on to compete at the Gay Games, a prestigious competition for LGBT athletes, and they won gold in 2010.
He says victory was special but it’s the friendships that he made through the sport that he values most. “And that’s the essence of the film too,” he says. “Yes, they achieve far more in the pool than they thought they would, but it’s about the friendships they make and that bit of self-discovery that makes it so charming.”
The film was shot last year and Daly was able to commit the time because he works in a sector — freelance property management — that allows him to set his own time. And the purchase of an old rectory in Longford some years earlier gave him the opportunity to escape the rat race frequently.
“I grew up with a very strong sense of being Irish,” he says. “We would spend a lot of time in Wexford where my mother was from, so I always loved the idea of spending as much of the time as I could in Ireland.”
He has no familial connection to Longford, but fell in love with the property when he saw it advertised.
“And it’s in a part of the country where property prices are as low as anywhere in Ireland, at least that was the case when I bought it.”
He says he had misgivings about being an openly gay man in rural Ireland but says he and Charles have been warmly welcomed.
“It feels like a very different country than the one I’d visit as a boy. It was still a great place then, but Ireland is special and when you come from somewhere else you can really sense that.”
Daly (right) hopes to spend increasing amounts of time in Ireland and may have to get used to his 15 minutes of fame when Swimming with
Men opens. Maybe he will even be inspired to start Longford’s first all-male synchronised swimming team.
Who knows? Stranger things have happened.