The History of Synchronized Swimming

Kelly  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. On June 15, 1904, hundreds of members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in New York City, set off for a fun day trip on a gorgeous summer day on a passenger steamboat called the General Slocum. Tragically, within half an hour, fire broke out, and an estimated 75% of the passengers, most of whom were women and children, died in the disaster. The tragedy highlighted how dangerous that was that most women and girls were not taught to swim, with the New York Daily Tribune writing, "One of the lessons which the General Slocum horror should bring home to every woman and girl in New York City is the desirability of knowing how to swim." Women and girls agreed, flocking to bath houses to learn to swim, not just in New York City, but elsewhere in the country as well. A marine journalist from Rhode Island, Wilbert E. Longfellow, who wrote about waterfront drownings, and who himself had been rescued from drowning twice, decided to learn to swim and to join the Rhode Island branch of the US Volunteer Lifesaving Corps. By 1905, Longfellow was appointed State Superintendent of the Corps and named Commodore. After he reduced the state's drowning rate by half, he was named the national organization's General Superintendent in 1910. Commodore Longfellow wanted to get people interested in swimming, and one of his strategies for that was to host water carnivals with races, games, and stunts. To encourage women and girls, Longfellow deliberately included women lifesavers in these carnivals. Around 1920 Longfellow, now heading the water safety education program for the American Red Cross, started putting on scripted water pageants, complete with costumes and music, but still focusing on the importance of swimming and water safety. The idea of the water pageant caught on, and soon local YWCAs and universities were hosting their own water pageants. In 1933, Olive McCormick, the National Safety Advisor of the Girl Scouts, published, "Water Pageants, Games, and Stunts," with instructions for every aspect of putting together these shows, and for doing so relatively inexpensively. This was during the Great Depression. At the 1934 World Fair in Chicago, audiences were wowed by the spectacle of the "Modern Mermaids," a show featuring 30 women swimmers performing routines to music in unison. As a press release at the time noted, "For all the world like airplanes in formation, the swimmers dive, turn, show the crawl, breast, and backstroke, and finally swim from sight, all to the strains of an in time with music. Every arm is raised at the same instant. On the dive, every head disappears below the surface at the same moment, and somehow all reappear together." Katherine Curtis, a physical education instructor in the Chicago Public Schools, had been tapped to design an aquatic act to showcase underwater lights in Lake Michigan, and the Modern Mermaids were what she developed. Curtis had been one of the many physical educators putting on water pageants in the 1920s. But this group swimming act was new to the fair audiences, and wildly popular. Originally booked for just a week, the fair kept extending the Modern Mermaids' contract, showing three times a day until the end of October, or whenever, "ice forms in the lagoon." At first, no one quite knew what to call the show, using terms like water ballet, or figure swimming. Radio announcer Norman Ross, dubbed it synchronized swimming, which the fair's publicity team latched on to. Although group swimming was new to most of the estimated 4.5 million people who watched it at the World Fair, Curtis and others, including Gertrude Titus, and Gertrude Goss, had been experimenting with what became synchronized swimming since the previous decade. A few years after the fair, Curtis founded coed synchronized swimming clubs at two colleges where she was instructing, and in May, 1939, the two teams competed as part of the annual Teachers Day program in Chicago, in what is now considered the first true synchronized swimming competition. In 1941, the Amateur Athletic Union, AAU, National Convention, voted to make synchronized swimming, albeit with separate men's and women's divisions, a full national level AAU sport. The United States entry into World War II at the end of 1941, however, meant that the first national championships didn't take place until several years later. Teams continued to incorporate themes and costumes, leaving many people to question whether synchronized swimming was art, or sport. The AAU, which hoped to push for inclusion in the Olympics, revised the rules of the competition in 1953, to set standards for scoring that, while still allowing for creativity would ensure a focus on technical proficiency. Not everyone in synchronized swimming agreed, and solo champion, Beulah Gundling, split off from the AAU and founded the International Academy of Aquatic Art, IAAA, with festivals that included fewer rules and merit levels in lieu of scores. Despite the rule change though, the International Olympic Committee, IOC, wasn't ready to admit synchronized swimming to the games, with IOC President Avery Brundage, scoffing that it wasn't a sport, calling it aquatic vaudeville. After Brundage's term ended, the International Swimming Federation, FINA, proposed the sport to the IOC. It was voted down for the 1980 games, but finally included in the 1984 games, with both the solo and pairs events admitted, though not the team event. With the backing of FINA and synchro federations, the IOC admitted the team event for the 1996 games, at the same time, dropping the solo and pairs events. The pairs event was added back into the Olympics for the 2000 games. In 2024, returning to its roots as a coed sport, each Olympic team of eight swimmers is permitted to include up to two men. However, of the 10 teams participating in the Paris Games, none include men. With only a year and a half between the eligibility announcement and the games. It would have been challenging for any men to be competitive, even American Bill May, a pioneer of the sport who had dreamed of competing in the Olympics for decades, and who tried out for the team.

Kelly  9:46  
Joining me now to help us learn more about the history of synchronized swimming, which is now called artistic swimming in the Olympics, is writer and masters synchronized swimmer Vicki Valosik, author of, "Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water."

Kelly  10:39  
Hi, Vicki, thanks so much for joining me today.

Vicki Valosik  10:41  
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Kelly. 

Kelly  10:44  
Yes. So I want to hear a little bit about how you came to write this book. I know you yourself are a synchronized swimmer. We'll talk about that terminology, I'm sure but how you decided that you wanted to write this book? 

Vicki Valosik  10:58  
Well,when I started doing synchronized swimming about 14 years ago, I was also a student, a graduate student in the Johns Hopkins writing program. So I was kind of always looking for story ideas. And I just endeavored on this very new and big thing in my life, which was joining a synchronized swimming team. So I got interested in history of this sport, and really also some things about being in the sport that made me question and bring up some of the books that would eventually become kind of key questions of the book, like, is it a sport, or is it entertainment? Because, you know, I was seeing how difficult it was. But at the same time, you know, we don't wear goggles, and we, you know, sacrifice some things that would make us be able to perform our sport better for the sake of aesthetics. So that I realized, as I started researching was a question that just went way back. And I found it to be an interesting sort of entry point into the sport.

Kelly  11:54  
I want to talk a little bit about that research and how you decided where to start the story. You know, you go back pretty far, and trace a pretty long history. So how did you sort of figure out where to start this story? How to get into it? What sorts of sources to look at?

Vicki Valosik  12:12  
Sure. Well, it started with Esther Williams, just because that was the extent of the knowledge I had at the time. I mean, I didn't really know how much further it went than her. And, you know, very quickly learned about Annette Kellerman, and she's such a fascinating person. And I saw some of this, it's a very interesting similarities between the two of them, they're both champion athletes before they found greater opportunity in the world of entertainment. And but then I, you know, I got deeper, realized the women were actually coming from a line of these kinds of performers that dated back to the 1870s, 1880s in England. So you know, by the time I like that far you might as well figure out, "Oh, when did it all start, this sort of performance element of aquatics." So then it kind of became an origin story of the sport. And so I was sort of trying to just track down, it went sort of, in my mind from being a history of synchronized swimming to, how did it originate and develop into the sport we know today. So that's why I ended up sort of covering such a long band of history because I was looking at, you know, from that sort of western culture's reentry into aquatics into you know, carnivals, and vaudeville and these different elements that were all part of the story.

Kelly  13:33  
So what kind of sources did you end up using, then? If it feels like it must be a get different kinds of sources, you've got the things you're looking at, in this very early history. And then as I understand it, you were also talking to people for the more more recent history to get more of a sense of what they experienced and that sort of thing.

Vicki Valosik  13:53  
So it you're right, it was a wide range of things that kind of some sort of depends on the era. So for example, the chapter on carnival diving girls, I was fortunate to have a lot of really amazing primary sources from these women themselves, because the International Swimming Hall of Fame is home to scrapbooks of some of these performers, which included their own notes and things like that. And then I also discovered an unpublished memoir of Maude Jamieson Gray, whose family was kind enough to allow me to read and, and share some stories from. So that's that's just one example, but then there was the chapter where I get into sort of the development of the earliest form of synchronized swimming when it got its name and became a sport, that was a lot of education journals. So a lot of magazines and the journals that people that were doing education and doing swimming training were reading, I was reading them. So it ranged from scrapbooks, to newspaper archives, to actual programs from performances and and water carnivals from the turn to this entry. And then like you said, doing interviews for people, like the book goes up to, the last chapter goes up to the '96 Olympics, so interviewing people that were involved in that, and then the epilogue to kind of getting us where we are today and interviewing some current athletes, judges. And so yeah, it was fun, I get to kind of dabble in many different kinds of research. 

Kelly  15:24  
The story, as you tell it, it really is a story of gender and women. The early point that you're able to identify as is really men. It's it's men doing what they call scientific swimming. And then as you trace it forward, it becomes more and more of a women's sport to the point where today, men are the ones fighting for inclusion in the sport. Could you talk a little bit about that, that long history, how you know how we go from this being really something that was being done by men to something where people can't even imagine men doing the sport today?

Vicki Valosik  15:43  
Well, in the earliest days, when men were doing this sort of what like become called scientific swimming in the 1800s, even before that, women just simply weren't swimming. So Benjamin Franklin was this accomplished swimmer and his wife couldn't even swim, which was typical. And women, for a lot of reasons, it wasn't considered proper for them to swim. Even as sea bathing grew in popularity, they were wearing these like just extremely heavy sort of bathing gowns that made it impossible to swim, where's the men at their bathing, you know, swimming holes, they were naked, and could just go, you know, try things out, learn by trial and error. And women and girls didn't really have that opportunity. And you know, at the same time, exercise and physical exertion were really frowned upon as we move into the Victorian era for women, specifically. So there was just this idea for a long time that women don't do these physical things, that you know, physical things, what would become the world of sports, but not yet called that was an area for men. And so then, really, that started to switch in the late Victorian era, when some of these had these sort of swimming performances moved into the worlds of commercial entertainment, and variety theater and music halls in England. And the swimming professors of the professional men performers were called, started taking their wives and daughters and bringing them into their acts and audiences, you know, had a clear preference for the female performers. And before long, you know, it was the women performers were much more popular, they were much more successful, and they were the ones being sought after. And by the early 1900s, swimming had sort of transformed into this feminine activity. So it's just it's interesting how it made that switch, largely because of audience preferences, and the world of commercial entertainment. Also, the element of performance too was, so we're talking specifically about aquatic performers, and women found more opportunity in this role, the life sciences and in the growing world of competitive swimming as a sport, because that was still considered a male domain. So this arena where you could be graceful and admired for your, you know, being like a mermaid and beautiful in the water, that was fine for women. But you know, getting out and, you know, swimming in the rivers and having endurance competitions, that was less acceptable. So women found this greater world. So this element of performance gave them an entry point into sports eventually.

Kelly  18:37  
Let's talk a little bit about the this world of entertainment. So even before it gets to screen, its onstage, like, how they are staging swimming shows, and you know, the sorts of things that had to be built and these really elaborate structures so that people can see what was happening under the water.

Vicki Valosik  19:00  
Yeah, that's a great question, because I think that that was some of the most interesting things that I found. So in the earliest days, we're talking the 1870s, 1880s, it was just women, or men swimming in these glass tanks. They were sort of steel frames, sometimes iron frames with like, basically, plate glass windows in between, sometimes it's just in the front, the more expensive ones were glass on all four sides. They were on wheels that could be rolled on to the stages, filled with water. So it was very small and the things they could do of course was pretty limited in these small tanks. But then you know, as it's this aquatic performance became more popular and also just technology for you know, the growing world of commercial entertainments was just like proliferating the Victorian era. They started getting really creative. So one of the I think the neatest things were these circuses were the, it was just a single ring circus that, in these really nice buildings called people's palaces in England, and they would do a traditional circus with horses and dry land acts. And then when that was over, they would clear all of that away, they would lift up a mat and expose this wooden floor with perforated holes. And it would sort of lift up, water would flood in and or bubble up through underneath the holes depending on which venue it was, until you suddenly have you know, this massive circus string full of water, and the swimmers would come out sometimes from underneath the seats sometimes they get flooded all the way underneath where the spectator sat so that you're just surprised all of a sudden these swimmers would appear in the middle of the ring. So that was really fun finding these these things. Yeah. 

Kelly  20:49  
So I want to talk a little bit about Annette Kellerman. You mentioned her earlier. And she is especially important because of what she does with you mentioned these terrible outfits that women had to wear to swim. And Annette Kellerman is just like, "This is ridiculous, I can't swim this way," and popularizes a new fashion for women in swimming. Can you talk a little bit about her and her, the her career, how she manages to find, you know, success in being this entertainment swimmer and, and is able to really push the boundary of what is acceptable for women to wear.

Vicki Valosik  21:30  
So Annette Kellerman is one of, to me the most fascinating characters in the book. And it's amazing to me that she's not more well known than she is because she was really the first female like daredevil of the silver screen, and she was just doing things that would be completely unheard of today, like diving from lighthouses and towers in the middle of the ocean, swimming with alligators, hands bound behind her back. But before that, that was sort of the pinnacle of her fame. Before that, she started out, actually in the same circuits as these entertainers we were talking about of the Victorian era, performing in music halls, and then she came to America and, and she came just at a great time where a variety theatre was really becoming vaudeville, which was just a much bigger and more polished world of entertainment. So it was an era where you could really become a star and your name will become known nationally and internationally, thanks to newspapers having photographs in them. And so a lot of things were changing that sort of enabled her stardom to elevate maybe in a way it wouldn't have if she had been born 20 years earlier. But on top of that, she was just this very accomplished swimmer and extremely vocal advocate for other women to become swimmers. And not just swimmers, but to sort of take charge of their own physical health and emotional health as well. I mean, I didn't get into that in the book as much but she was also gave a lot of talks just about sort of, you know, the malaise of women at the time, and you know, how exercise could be a part of that it just sort of it nothing extreme. I mean, she, you know, talk about going for long walks, and how much that would be beneficial to women, which, even in the Victorian era, that was still sort of like, wow, you know, people just women weren't doing that. But then she really advocated for swimming, that was obviously the thing that gave her the most joy. And she was what she credited her beauty to. She was considered, you know, the most perfect woman. Her shape was, you know, that was sort of hard to have line given to her by a Harvard professor. She so she would tell women, this is how you can achieve that for yourselves as well. So one of her lectures, and actually she did this more than once, I found examples more than one time, where she would invite women and then she was gonna give them the secrets to health and happiness and which now the secrets were very simple, just eat healthy, exercise, and swim. And she would say, "You've got to get rid of this corset. This is, you know, really hampering your physical development, your ability to breathe is you know, you have to be able to breathe to be brave." So she had these great like one liners, but she would actually in front of the whole audience, remove her dress, and then rip her to show that she had no corset, and she would even rip down to her one piece bathing suit that she had on, cut it open and and say, "Look, you know, I'm practicing what I preach. This is just my natural waist line." And then she would end by getting into a tank of water and performing and just wowing the audience with her physical dexterity, reminding them at every opportunity. I'm like this because I swim so you should swim too. So she was just a huge advocate. And she she wrote a lot too. She published two books, authored numerous articles on swimming and, and health and, you know, all sorts of physical culture topics for women. And one that I love was actually titled something along the lines of, "Prudery Is the Biggest Hindrance to Swimming." I mean, it was just like, you know, to her it was so clear, but like, it's these things are being forced on women. And that's why women are scared of the water. That's why they're drowning. That's why they're not learning to swim. We have to get rid of these horrible bathing costumes. And, and hers, you know, took off, her one piece bathing suit.

Kelly  25:24  
We haven't even gotten to actual synchronized, quote unquote, synchronized swimming yet. So let's get to Chicago in the late 20s, early 30s, and Katherine Curtis. I'm a Chicagoan, love Chicago, talk about it frequently on this podcast. And I love that Chicago is like the epicenter of where this all started. Let's talk a little bit about that. And from what I understand from your, your book, it doesn't like it's not like one person is like and now, we are doing synchronized swimming, but it sort of bubbles up from multiple places at the same time. So what is happening then? 

Vicki Valosik  26:01  
Sure. So in the 1920s, there was this clamp down on competitive sports for young women, which had only a decade and two decades earlier been growing in popularity, but there was this sort of move within the world of physical education that no that's not what we want young women to be doing. That's not the skills that is going to help them become the have the roles that society expects of them, the wives and mothers and to not be competitive, and sort of aggressive. So there was this clamp down. And at the same time, the swimming had become hugely popular, thanks to Gertrude Ederle swimming English channel, the first women's Olympic swimming team, diving team doing so great in the 1920 and '24. Olympics. So it was sort of like what to do with this interest in aquatics there, you know, there was not a lot of opportunity in competitive swimming for girls. So a lot of educators just started experimenting, like what are other things we can do in the water, and swimming to music became really popular, because it was sort of this challenge of, you know, aligning your movements with the rhythm. And at the same time, the stunt swimming that had started back with the the men we talked about, the scientific swimmers, that had continued to evolve. And the portfolio of movements was huge by that point, and had been, you know, recorded in multiple books of practicing stunt swimming was another thing. And also just swimming in group formations became popular, that was sort of building off of a military march style of swimming, that all of these three things became the building blocks. And that was, as you mentioned, going on in different places, but Chicago was the epicenter, really, because of Katherine Curtis, who was an educator in Chicago. And she was, you know, one of a handful of physical educators who were leading this charge. And she put together performances of what she was calling at the time rhythmic swimming, which was the sort of group swimming to music and matching your moves, throwing in a few stunts here and there and performed this group the Modern Mermaids performed at the 1934 World Fair and at the fair, it got its name "synchronized swimming" from the Master of Ceremonies called it that. So she was sort of the person who was at the helm when it got its name. And then after that, she also was the person who shepherded synchronized swimming into competitive sport. So the end of the decade, 1939, two of the different synchronized swimming clubs, she had founded at different schools in Chicago, held a competition. It was just a dual meet between the two clubs, but that is considered the first synchronized swimming competition. And then she she and some of those students and others in that world started putting together rules building on that first competition, that would become the first set of rules for the sport. So Katherine Curtis, and these clubs in Chicago were really key to the development in the early years and and for the first several national championships, so they were won by a Chicago team. So it was the midwest was really like a hub for the sport in the early years before it sort of shifted to California.

Kelly  29:15  
And that first competition had men in it too, right? The groups weren't just women.

Vicki Valosik  29:20  
That's correct. Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. Both of those two clubs were coed clubs and the first competition was won by a coed team and and also the first AAU American Amateur Athletic Union competition was also coed until it became a national AAU sport. And the AAU just said, "Now, we've got rules against women and men competing together," and they would only sanction the sport as separate events for men and women. So that was sort of the division and the beginning of the end of the sport for men for many, many years because there just wasn't a lot of interest in male only events.

Kelly  29:59  
And so even though It's a sport and it's there are competitions all over the country. There's college teams. It takes a really long time for the Olympics to accept this as a sport that should be competitive. And I in my notes, write down "Avery Brundage Boo." So Avery Brundage is this guy who is standing in the way of synchronized swimming. So what what are his arguments against the inclusion of synchronized swimming in the Olympics? 

Vicki Valosik  30:33  
So Avery Brundage, there are a couple of things really. So Avery Brundage was of the old school thinking of male sports gatekeepers who really did not even want women in the Olympics to begin with. So I mean, they just already from that perspective, he didn't want women there at all. So anything new women's, you know, at that point, it was really a women's only sport. He just wasn't interested. Also, there's the element of, you know, a lot of people in that era and still today too, think if it doesn't involve a stopwatch, or you know, something that can be quantifiably measured in purely objective terms, then it's not a real sport, if if, if it requires judges, it's not a sport. So he, he had that against it as well. He also, you know, it had come from a very pagentry path, you know, I mean, water pageants, actually called water pageants with dialogue and props and costumes, eventually, you know, were the sort of beginning of synchronized swimming. So these women who were doing these, you know, like, we were just hanging out with Curtis, they were sort of building on these water patterns that were already a performance genre. So, it did have this kind of side to it that was very much a showbiz side. So he, you know, he called it aquatic vaudeville. Later on as Esther Williams became popular, you know, he would always just say, "These are all Esther Williams wannabes." So he just had many reasons. But, you know, the one he would give was the sort of showbiz connections that he didn't like, but he also you know, he really didn't want women in there anyways.

Kelly  32:15  
And so then once Avery Brundage is gone, they still have to face this the the Soviet element, there's like this Cold War element going on. So can you talk about what's happening there? And of course, we've got this whole like, the Olympics are gonna be in Moscow and people are gonna boycott and then they're gonna be in LA, and Russians are gonna boycott. So what all is happening there?

Vicki Valosik  32:38  
So this was so interesting, because you've got synchronized swimming, this women's sport emerging in America. And you know, it, since it started in America and America did help the sport spread, but it was really the dominant country by by leaps and bounds in the sport. So it was clearly going to win if it you know, if it became an Olympic sport. Then on the other hand, you have the Soviet Union, with a similar kind of sport emerging, which is rhythmic gymnastics. They, it's remarkable how much their histories align, they started around the same time, they both came from these worlds of performance, and then got sort of Olympic ambitions and were both female only. So according to people who were  there for the vote, it's really because rhythmic gymnastics was coming up alongside synchronized swimming, and some of the arguments that could be made against it, requiring judges and that sort of thing. You know, once when it gymnastics passed, then you couldn't really say, the same argument about synchronized swimming, because it's like, well, if it passed for rhythmic gymnastics, then these we can make the similar accommodations for synchronized swimming. But it was also just, you know, these two countries or two, two parts of the world very much at loggerheads and not wanting either one to have any kind of advantage at the Olympics and in the international sports arena. So it's just interesting, a little bit emerged out of this tension. And ironically, if no one synchronized swimming was voted in for the 1984 Olympics, which were in Los Angeles, it had not been voted in, as you mentioned, in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. But when voting ended, it was only the duet that was admitted, and the duet event. And so you know, those in the sport really wanted the team event also, and solos, and they kind of tried to push for that. And the only reason that solos were added at the last minute was because the Soviet Union boycotted the '84 games sort of in retaliation for the US leading a boycott against the 1980 games, which just left all of this airtime to be filled. So they said, "Okay, fine, just add your solos." So, the solos had been voted down by the Soviet bloc, but then their withdrawal from the Olympics were what actually, you know, freed up the time at the Olympics to add them. 

Kelly  34:54  
And of course, ironically, the Russians are now the dominant team.

Vicki Valosik  34:58  
Yeah. Yes, they are by far the dominant team. Yeah.

Kelly  35:02  
So a few years ago, I guess 2017 I think, the name of the sport, we've been calling it synchronized swimming, but it was changed to artistic swimming. Can you talk about the reasons for that? And I understand that the athletes are not universally happy with that change?

Vicki Valosik  35:20  
Yes. So the reasons for that, I interviewed the head, the man who had been the head of FINA, the International Swimming Federation, at the time the decision was made, and according to him, it was sort of a mandate coming from the IOC, and Thomas Bach, the head of the IOC himself. He was watching the sport one day and said, "You know, maybe synchronized swimming isn't the best name for this sport. They're doing a lot of things that aren't, they're doing a lot more. It's about more than synchronization." So I think I think it came probably from a good place, you know, he thought of it, there's a lot more to it than that. You know, now we have these different events that where not everyone's doing the same thing at the same time, you know. We have a lot of lifts. And there's even a routine called the combo routine, where different groups are doing different things at the same time. So it's not just strict synchronization. So I think that's what he was thinking. But it sort of just once the idea was put in his head, like he wanted the sport to have a new name, according to Mărculescu and said, "Come up with a new name." So Mărculescu, the head of FINA, tapped the technical synchronized swimming committee with coming up with something. And they said, "We don't we don't want a new name." And you know, kind of they let it lie a little bit. And then the Olympics came back and said, "We want your new name," so he pushed for it. And artistic swimming is what they came up with. Different ideas were floated including rhythmic swimming, and they said no, that's, that's harkening back directly to the 1930s, and what came before so that was ruled out. But they were hoping artistic swimming would align it with artistic gymnastics, since then, that has already sort of, you know, of course, proven to be very dynamic and popular sport. But I mean, ultimately, still didn't want it. And when it came to a vote, it was voted on rather than a straw vote first, by those in the sport, it went straight to the whole thing at Congress, which includes water polo players, and divers and speed swimmers, and, you know, people who don't know the first thing about synchronized swimming. And so they just assumed, you know, all this has been put forth by the Synchronized Swimming Committee, "This must be what they want. Fine, I'll vote for it," but, but it really wasn't. And then it came as a complete surprise to the athletes, coaches all around the world, and a petition was launched almost immediately that got 11,000 signatures. And the comments are just so many of the comments were about this fear that we've worked so hard to be taken seriously as a sport and the name, having any kind of artistry in the name takes away from that. It takes away from the perception of the athleticism that it's now greater than ever. So that was, that was the reason athletes were upset. Plus, of course, that was sort of mandated from someone outside of the sport, which was upsetting, you know, some, right, but, but really, they felt like it was a step backwards towards the era of performance that they had tried to sort of get away from.

Kelly  38:18  
We've talked a little bit about the athleticism and you know, trying to be taken seriously. Could you tell us as a synchronized swimmer yourself, just how hard it is? I mean, I've watched some videos and I cannot even imagine like, what all does this take to be able to just succeed in this sport?

Vicki Valosik  38:35  
It is incredibly difficult. And what they do at the Olympic level is, you know, leap years beyond what I do as a mastery synchronized swimmer, but I you know, at least I understand the the maneuvers that they're doing to achieve what they're doing. And so it's, you know, there's just so many things going on, there's, it's incredibly cardio heavy, but yet at the same time, you're underwater for more than half of the routine typically. So you're already that's just the initial challenge, right, you're holding your breath while you're doing this cardio thing, then you're upside down and you have to support yourself, you have to use all of this power either with sculling your hands if you're upside down, egg beater with your legs if your right side up. In addition, the only the only sort of force you can give it is against the water itself. So when you see these groups, like just catapult one of their swimmers out of the water, I mean, that's, that's all taking place in the deep end, they're not allowed to touch the bottom. And so they're all just having to kick so fast and so hard that they're creating enough resistance against the water to shoot themselves and all of the other bodies, they're supporting higher into the water until it's high enough to go you know, throw someone off the top. So there's that that's the lifts. That's incredibly difficult. There's yeah, like I said, the all of the cardio movement, but then there's, there's a lot of other unseen things too. Like if you watch closer, you'll realize that they're actually moving all over the pool, the whole routine. So they're never, they're doing these complex maneuvers, as they weave in and out of patterns, and as they're covering the entire pool. So that's, you know, actually part of the rules, you need to cover all of the surface of the pool, making multiple laps up and down it. Sometimes the actual pattern changes within the group and the spatial awareness that you need. Those are happening while doing some of these really complex upside down maneuvers holding their breath. And they can't see, you know, no goggles blurry. So it was just like, you know, it's just easy to miss some of the, you know, the, the lifts and the throws are spectacular. But the small things too, are just incredibly hard. And then on top of that, of course, they're still synchronizing, right I mean, that's, that's just really challenging to to do all of these things exactly alike. And you know, with every little twist of the ankle matching perfectly. That's some of the reasons it's really difficult.

Kelly  41:04  
And no goggles,

Vicki Valosik  41:05  
And no goggles. Not at the Olympics and the league I swim in, they're allowed but frowned upon, but at the Olympics strictly no goggles. 

Kelly  41:14  
So I'm gonna put some links to some recent Olympic routines in the show notes and people should could go watch because it is just you can't imagine it until you're watching it. I was telling my kids I was like, so Avery Brundage didn't think this was athletic. And then I showed them the routine and there were like, "Oh my gosh!" So there is so much more in this book, we're not going to get a chance to talk about can you tell listeners how they can get a copy?

Vicki Valosik  41:40  
Absolutely. You can get it wherever you buy books through Amazon, through the my publishers, WW Norton, their website links to all of the different places you can get it. But indy booksellers as I was one of those that's on there, as well as Barnes and Noble and your local bookstore, hopefully.

Kelly  41:59  
And there's fantastic illustrations and pictures throughout as well.

Vicki Valosik  42:05  
It's a lot of fun illustrations in there.

Kelly  42:08  
Was there anything else you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Vicki Valosik  42:11  
I think one of the things that I didn't expect when I was writing the book until I was really, it was really coming together in my my mind after many years of preparation when it's really not just a sport history of synchronized swimming, but it's a history of women's swimming, because these two were just so incredibly linked. There was just no way to tell the story of synchronized swimming without the story of you know, women's fight to be taken seriously as athletes, women's fight just to get to be athletes in the first place, and women's fight just to get to swim for their own safety and enjoyment. So there's just so many elements of women's empowerment in this story. So that's something that I I was happy to see come together. 

Kelly  42:54  
Well, it's a fantastic book. I hope everyone will go read it. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Vicki Valosik  43:00  
Thank you so much Kelly. It was a pleasure.

Teddy  43:41  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain or are used with permission. You can find us on twitter or instagram, @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions, corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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