SURPRISING CHURN OF EVENTS
It’s no SCTV skit — men are slowly entering the mainstream of elite-level synchro swimming while the sport tries to unlock the secret to respect.
‘‘Physically, synchronized swimming is one of the toughest sports in the world because it combines so many other sports.” BILL MAY SYNCHRO SWIMMING PIONEER
They elegantly stride to edge of the pool — he a head taller than she — before diving into the water to begin their synchronized swimming routine.
Decades of effort to increase gender equality in sports has focused on women breaking into male-dominated sports, but what Robert Prevost is showcasing in Toronto at the Canadian championships this week is the reverse of that story.
Synchronized swimming is one of the only sports where men have long been shut out from the highest levels of competition, funding and respect.
That’s now in the earliest stages of change.
FINA, the international governing body for water sports, allowed men to compete for the first time at the 2015 world championships and, last month asked the International Olympic Committee to include the mixed-duet event in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Prevost started synchronized swimming in Montreal when he was 12 years old, to build on his strength and skills for other sports: swimming, diving and water polo.
“It was a way to get more time in the pool, and I found it a lot more challenging than swimming,” he said in explaining why he stuck with this sport longer than the others.
As the only boy entered, he said he got a lot of encouragement from parents and coaches when he started competing at the club level, but there was never a possibility of a real future: no place for him on the national team or even the chance to represent Canada at the worlds or Olympics.
He retired in his 20s, his athletic prime, and channeled his passion for the sport into coaching. Prevost hadn’t competed for more than a decade when FINA finally opened the door for men, and he felt he had no choice but to get back into the pool so Canada could send a mixed-duet entry to the 2015 world championships.
“There was no one else,” said Prevost, who finished eighth with Stephanie Leclair, a 2012 Olympian in the women’s team event.
Two years later, there still isn’t anyone else.
Prevost, now 37, and new partner Isabelle Blanchet-Rampling were the only mixed duet at the Canadian Open championships, which end Saturday at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. It’s now up to a selection committee to determine if they go to the worlds in Budapest in July.
“It’s hasn’t been a barn-burning, floodgates-opening sort of thing,” said Synchro Canada boss Jackie Buckingham. “It’s going to take some time before it becomes mainstream. Hopefully, (Prevost’s) success will bring more males to the sport.”
The move to legitimize men in synchronized swimming is actually returning to the very earliest days of the sport, when it was based on lifesaving techniques — the first compe- titions in the 1890s were for men only. It wasn’t until the 1900s that women started to dominate and the Esther Williams aqua-musical films of the 1940s popularized the sport.
Still, here and there through the decades there have always been a few boys and men who were both passionate and stubborn enough to pursue the sport even though they were barred from the top levels.
Canada has had several young water polo players who used synchronized swimming training to help their game, and enjoyed it enough to put together a competitive routine. At the elite level, there are several pioneers such as Bill May, who long competed alongside women in the U.S. and pushed for more international opportunities.
“We just don’t have enough of those stories, but I think it will come,” Buckingham said.
In many ways, the mixed duet is developing more like pairs figure skating than the conventional female duet, which demands two swimmers to be mirror images of each other — right down to the way they point their fingers and toes.
That’s not a protocol that works so well with the different body compositions of males and females, and mixed-duet scoring has changed to encourage more lifts and throws and allow for the concept that the partners might do different things.
“There’s the whole relationship between the male and the female in terms of choreography and captivating an audience. What we’re trying to do with our sport is build its profile and grow an audience that loves to come and watch, and I think having males involved allows for that whole other dynamic that, to this point, we haven’t had,” Buckingham said. “Who knows where it could go.” It may go some way towards increasing respect for this generally misunderstood sport.
In the battle to be taken seriously and stay relevant, synchro hasn’t done itself any favours by hiding much of its athleticism beneath glitz and performance smiles. That’s something Canada’s entire team is trying to change with attempts to ramp up the technical difficulty with increased speed and dramatic lifts in their eight-woman routines.
The mixed duet offers the possibility of even more spectacular lifts and throws to showcase the athletic side.
“I think it’s fantastic. Why not include as many people as you can?” Gabriella Brisson, a competitor on the national women’s team, said of the inclusion of men.
But she’s a little more mixed on the idea that having men in the sport might help people realize how physically demanding it really is. “As strong, empowered young women, I wish we could do that on our own, but that’s the way the world works right now and if that’s going to help us catch a little bit of a break, then I will take it.”
May, the best-known male pioneer, is used to explaining the challenges of the sport that captured him when he was 10 years old and hasn’t let go.
‘‘Physically, synchronized swimming is one of the toughest sports in the world because it combines so many other sports — swimming, gymnastics, ballet, the (cardiovascular system) of a runner — and you do it all without touching the bottom or the luxury of breathing,” said May, who won gold (tech program) and silver (free) at the 2015 worlds.
“I loved it from a very young age and I was stubborn, so when someone told me I couldn’t do it, or there was no future for me, that drove me even more to prove them wrong,” he said. “Women should be able to do whatever sport or trade they want to do, and so should men.”
But he, like Prevost, had given up on the possibility of it happening in his lifetime. He was shocked, thrilled and immediately in a panic about getting back into competitive form after FINA announced men would finally be allowed at the worlds.
“Luckily I had to stay in shape in the show,” he said, referring to Cirque du Soleil’s water-based spectacle in Las Vegas, where he performs.
“If I had taken those 10 years off, I probably would have cried.”
The International Olympic Committee is set to announce changes to the 2020 Summer Games menu in July. If mixed duet makes it, May plans to be there.
“Absolutely,100 per cent,” said May, who would be 41years old by then.
Prevost, who is one year younger and already works a 70-hour week as a coach and pool manager for the city of Montreal, feels the same way.
“I feel young,” he said, smiling. “I have no choice.”