Irish Tricolours adorned the Olympic Park, while at the Aquatic Centre, fans and reporters alike struggled to understand the finer points of synchronised swimming
KT AND her Sunshine Band resume Olympic duties in London this afternoon. After a 24-hour breather, Katie Taylor’s fully-fired supporters are ready to send their woman roaring into tomorrow’s lightweight boxing final.
In the meantime, they kept the party going around the city – the amount of Irish Tricolours adorning the course during yesterday’s triathlon a testament to the size of Team Taylor on tour.
Some of the lucky ones had tickets for other events, while there were plenty of green jerseys roaming around the packed precincts of the buzzing Olympic Park in Stratford.
Try as we might, we couldn’t spot any Irish flags in the Aquatic Centre for the synchronised swimming, but we did come across an RTÉ reporter and camera crew – entirely baffled by what they had just seen. (No shame in that, it must be said.)
It was the duets final, with 12 pairs of swimmers performing routines and marked on technical and artistic merit. It is figure skating when the ice melts and there’s no plug hole in the rink.
Compared to the swim meet, when reporters had to register for tickets because of the demand, uptake on the press boxes was slow. Even the BBC’s commentary corner – where Clare Balding was incarcerated for a week with a former swimmer famous for tearing off his shirt on Strictly Come Dancing – was deserted.
But the public seats were packed, as they always have been throughout the Games.
There was an interview with a choreographer before the competition, who explained the finer points of synchronised swimming.
We were introduced to the basic moves – sculling (moving the hands to keep the body afloat) ballet leg (periscope up) boosting (rising out of the water) and the egg-beater (whirring the legs like a Kenwood whisk).
Then they cranked up the music and the audience did the YMCA before the athletes did their thing.
There is no doubting the physical prowess of the women who do this sport. They need the lung capacity of a horse and the strength to remain afloat while wearing a tonne of industrial strength make-up.
But for all their grace and athleticism – the swimmers are underwater for three-quarters of a 3½ minute routine – the competition seems a surreal intrusion into the straightforward world of Olympic sport.
The swimmers wear outlandish swimsuits and glittering headpieces – but the crowning glory is their hair, slicked back and glistening like molten plastic. No matter how many dives and jumps and underwater twirls they do, not so much as a single hair goes astray.
It is done with gelatine, boiled up like an old-fashioned gluepot until it reaches a tarry consistency and then slathered on to the hair until it sets. With rendered horses hooves on their heads, the women are now ready to begin their dunking dressage.
Of course, it’s easy for those of us who aren’t in the shout for Olympic glory to mock the synchro squads, but the whole thing looks daft.
The Russians – who won gold – did the splits deckside before they even got into the water.
Their impressive display of upside down dancing, dolphin-like flips out of the water, aggressive ankle flexing and face-pulling was supposed to depict toys coming to life.
They wore garish, clownish swimsuits and what looked like sequined industrial ear-protecters. Their eyes were an explosion in an eye-shadow factory.
To the untutored spectator, one routine looks much the same as another.
For reasons which escaped us, the flexible Ukrainians appeared to be dressed as psychedelic owls – perhaps they were doing a riff on Mayor Johnson’s description of the “semi-naked” female beach volleyballers “glistening like wet otters”.
The British duo dived in to the sound of squawking crows and a Chemical Brothers soundtrack. The Chinese pair yelped out a blood-curdling scream before they slipped beneath the water while the Canadians laughed dementedly and pretended to play the trumpet. Or something.
Limbs were flying up out of the water and bending in the most peculiar ways. Lots of disembodied ballet-leg action, floating ramrod straight as if in a flood at a mannequin manufacturer.
Thanks to the underwater pictures, there was enough “egg-beating” going on to power a generator. The camera teams shot through glass windows in the swimming pool wall – just like in the old days at Butlins holiday camp in Mosney, where a transparent wall in the dining hall/pub gave diners an underwater view of the swimmers next door.
As a result, there was no shortage of full moons over Mosney during the day.
The Americans had a touch of the Irish dancing costume about their swimsuits. At one point, they locked legs and did a watery Walls of Limerick. Then they seemed to be trying to drown each other.
One the hardest things for the swimmers to do was keep smiling when their lungs were fit to burst – it was a case of 50 shades of gasp. A grin over a grimace encased in indelible lipstick is an unsettling sight.
Afterwards, they stood on the deck to hear their marks. Incredibly, thanks to the cow-gum on their head, not a drop of water dripped off them.
The Spanish duo – their hair seemed cling-filmed – were the crowd’s favourite. They did a tango-themed routine and it won them silver.
There is no men’s synchronised swimming in the Olympics. If there was, there could only be one soundtrack – the Nutcracker Suite.
