# 51
The strange sport of Synchronised Swimming[1] has featured in the Olympics since the Los Angeles
Both as a sport and as a spectacle, synchronised swimming has to be seen to be believed. Competitors are required to display, simultaneously, world-class accomplishments in dance, swimming, gymnastics and diving. Not to mention being able to hold their breath almost indefinitely and to remain permanently smiling beneath industrial quantities of lipstick, eyeliner, sequins and hair gel. Should someone not ask, what is the point of it all? Are they not aware that far more sensible events are already well-established within the separate disciplines of swimming, gymnastics etcetera and etcetera? Imagine if boxing and cycling and archery were combined into one competition. Imagine the mayhem…
Synchro competitors are judged on ‘technical merit’ and ‘artistic impression’. Their movements form an exaggerated choreography, improbably inspired by their chosen two to four minutes worth of music. The echoing acoustics of swimming pools are never going to be favourable to hearing, let alone appreciating, music of any kind. And do please remember, the soundtrack has to be remain audible to the swimmers, even under water. On the day, the foreground addition of constant splishing and splashing probably matters little to the quality of anyone’s musical experience.
I can never see Synchronised Swimming without being immediately reminded of both Busby Berkeley and Stevie Smith; two artists I would have difficulty combining by any other association. Busby Berkeley created extraordinary geometric patterns using dancers in the routines he designed for Hollywood
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
“Nobody heard him, the dead man,” - the swimmer’s gender is irrelevant. When first published, the poem was accompanied by one of Smith’s own drawings in which a girl stands waist-deep in water and gazes out through a curtain of bedraggled hair. Her expression is quizzical, to say the least. I am tempted to wonder if Stevie didn’t somehow anticipate the de rigueur appearance of all our contemporary synchronised swimmers, albeit when having a ‘bad hair’ day.
Stevie Smith is said to have written this poem after reading a newspaper report of a drowning where the onlookers had failed to realise that the victim was in distress. This observation, alone, would surely qualify her to comment on the Olympics, even were she not, in her own way, well-acquainted with the pressures that life can bring. She was familiar with the private struggle that goes unnoticed until its unhappy conclusion forces others to pay attention:
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
The pretence of jollity implied by the use of “larking” breaks down on that stark confirmation, “And now he’s dead”. Of necessity, swimmers constantly repeat their movements. Smith repeats words and phrases first to enhance their meaning and then to question it. A word or gesture repeated too often begins to lose meaning and this is a poem about being misunderstood. The drowned man is trying, post mortem, to explain what went wrong. A love of ‘larking’ and the effect of the cold water on his heart are the wrong explanations. He tries to insist that “it was too cold always” and to make the onlookers aware, “I was much too far out all my life”.
Synchronised Swimmers, like all modern Olympic athletes, are under extreme pressure and ‘not waving but drowning’ suggests how signs of distress can be overlooked, even as the pressure becomes overwhelming. Being ‘too far out’ is almost the definitive Olympic predicament, which Synchro further enhances by the contrived movements, grotesque make-up and gaudy costumes imposed on the swimmers. What does it matter to “The Sport” if, inside the aspiring swimmer, an unseen individual is drowning? We, the audience at the venues and on television, are the ‘They’ recorded in the poem. With our short attention spans and ultimate indifference we consume as entertainment the spectacular diversion provided by athletes in the name of The Games. And the television pundits proffer the illusion that we know them.
Olympic victims will expire in many other ways than by drowning. For some, defeat in the struggle for medals is a form of death. Others can be seen to die spiritually and emotionally by losing their self-esteem. And we, of course, like ‘They’ in the poem, can duck our guilt by putting the blame back onto the drowning person – they made their move too soon, they jumped the gun, they just couldn’t hack it on the day…there’s always another chance (in four years’ time, at Rio. A life after death). Waving and drowning are not the same thing but Synchronised Swimming shows how they might be confused. Mayday-signals, passing unrecognised, confirm that the capacity for being misunderstood is one of those strange commonplaces that actually unite us all, athletes and spectators alike. When we see swimmers waving, should we do more than just wave back?
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