Canadian women drowning out ‘silly stereotypes’
Synchronized swimming has long been known more for its garish makeup and artistry than its athleticism, and that’s something the Canadian women’s team is trying to change.
They are moving faster in the water and executing more difficult highlights, which means harder acrobatics for the team members who fly in the air, and more strength needed from those who push from underneath — while holding their breath and not touching the bottom of the pool.
“We’re trying to push the limits on the strength and power aspects to hopefully turn the attention away from the silly stereotypes that tend to go with synchro,” said Gabriella Brisson, a 23-year-old team member from Calgary.
They hope this path will ultimately lead back to the international podium and the good graces of Canada’s elite sport funding agency, Own the Podi- um.
“Athletes coming from Canada have had that reputation of being really creative, choreographically interesting, and this particular group of athletes (on the post 2012 London team) came at it a slightly different way,” explained Jackie Buckingham, chief executive of Synchro Canada.
“They’re pushing the technical difficulty of the sport and that always comes with a bit of a risk.”
The team, unfortunately, has been on the wrong side of the risk-reward equation far more than they expected.
Canada failed to earn a spot for the 2016 Rio Olympics despite winning its qualifying tournament, and the duet finished lower than projected in seventh, so Synchro Canada lost the $750,000 on average it had received annually from Own the Podium to support training, competition travel and support staff.
Then last week in Japan the eight women in the team event planned to unveil their new technical routine, but didn’t get the chance. Key team members sustained injuries while practising just days before the competition and that — coupled with injuries to other teammates before leaving Canada, and travelling without full substitutes because of budget constraints — forced them to pull out of the competition.
So, on Thursday at the Canadian Open championships at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, the national team unveiled its tech routine with just half of its regular swimmers. And they still don’t have the full team needed to pull off the longer free routine, so they’ve pulled out of Saturday’s finals.
“It’s definitely been a work in progress,” Buckingham said. “With increased technical development comes increased risk of injury, too, so we’re now in the position to regroup and go forward from here.”
Injuries in synchronized swimming are primarily concussions from heads colliding when a highlight doesn’t go quite as planned, or overuse injuries from the intensive training.
“There’s always little things that happen. We’re in such close proximity to each other, and we’re pushing the limits of how our bodies move all the time,” Brisson said.
“The goal is that the difficulty scores are going to reflect what we’re doing and, of course, a future goal is that once we’ve really mastered the difficulty the next thing that comes is the execution.”