What Artistic Swimmers Wish You Knew About This Absolutely Grueling Olympic Sport

Whereas lots of people suppose creative swimming is delightfully antiquated—a bunch of “bathing beauties” in floral swim caps and cherry-lipped smiles—that concept is a drained previous stereotype that Daniella Ramirez, a Workforce USA creative swimmer set to compete on the 2024 Olympic Video games, is sick of listening to. She’s amassed a TikTok following together with her post-performance, ASMR-esque “get unready with me” movies, and he or she’s hoping her content material finally brings extra consideration to, and respect for, a grueling (generally harmful) sport she’s spent her total life—fairly actually, her mother and grandmother have been athletes too—perfecting.

Ramirez lately spoke with SELF on what it takes to compete in creative swimming at an Olympic degree; why she’s bored with misogynistic, sexualized associations of the game; how scary being inverted underwater can really be; and different issues she needs extra folks knew.

SELF: In creative swimming, there’s a lot emphasis on artistry and wonder—in a predominantly feminine sport. Do you generally really feel like outsiders don’t take it as significantly as they need to due to this?

Daniella Ramirez: I really feel like my aim as a content material creator has all the time been to make our sport extra revered and put it within the limelight—to point out folks how onerous it really is. Folks are likely to affiliate creative swimming with Esther Williams, or ladies diving right into a pool sideways in a line. It’s all the time tremendous hypersexualized, or we’re within the again simply being fairly. It’s not like that. We’re not showgirls who contact the underside of the pool, put an arm and a leg up, and look good. I feel it’s very irritating for me to speak about as a result of it’s so ingrained into American Hollywood that synchronized swimming is background dancing for a pool celebration. There are a variety of misconceptions there.

In order that’s one frequent false impression about creative swimming—you could stand in your ft underwater throughout competitors?

Folks all the time suppose we contact the underside, however I’ve by no means, ever touched the underside of the pool in a routine, ever. What’s one other good false impression? The freaking flower caps. Can we finish it with the flower caps? Please put that in there. Please finish flower caps.

Except for previous sexist media associations, why do you suppose some folks have such a misunderstanding of the game?

Once you have a look at somebody like Simone Biles, I really feel prefer it’s simpler to understand simply how onerous her sport is as a result of it’s on land, and we all know how physics works. Lots of people are likely to suppose swimming itself is straightforward, however it’s tremendous onerous as it’s. Now as an alternative of swimming forwards and backwards, think about going up and down too, and treading water. That’s creative swimming.

In Paris, you and your teammates will likely be within the pool competing for roughly three to three-and-a-half minutes at a time (on three consecutive days). How lengthy does it take to arrange for these performances?

Main as much as the competitors, we’re coaching within the pool for about two hours a day, three days every week, for one efficiency. However that’s simply time within the water—we do a ton of different exercises, like CrossFit, however with our mouths taped to assist with breath management since we’re underwater a lot. We need to ensure that our lungs are actually, actually sturdy. We additionally do a variety of weight coaching with excessive reps and fairly low weights. Lengthy earlier than a contest, we’ll additionally do regular swimming—we’ll swim laps for 3 hours a day at some factors.

Workforce USA, together with Daniella Ramirez, competing on the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships.

Quinn Rooney/Getty Photographs

Talking of your respiration, you and your teammates spend a *lot* of time underwater—generally half of your efficiency! Has it gotten simpler through the years as you’ve grown in your sport?