When you watch the U.S. Artistic Swimming team practice for the Olympics — their bodies down, their legs scissoring in the air in perfect timing, like frenzied offshore wind turbines — you’ll notice two things.
First off, the sport is harder, and maybe even crazier, than you think. Second, in a discipline whose passion for homogeneity is reflected in the name before 2017, synchronized swimming, one of the athletes in the pool is not like the other.
His name is Bill May, and he’s the only person on the team. A rule change in 2022 clears the way for men to compete in the sport at this summer’s Paris Games. This means that this is the first and, realistically, last chance of May to fulfill a lifelong dream of competing in the Olympics. He is 45 years old.
There are 12 people in the team, but only eight, plus substitutes, will travel to Paris – a painful reality for the close-knit group. On Saturday, the team will announce who made the final cut.
May is a towering figure in the sport, a barrier-breaker for more than three decades and a leader in the push to open Olympic competition to men. But their fate this summer does not depend on individual achievements or status as advocates, but on the ability to perform as one-eighth of the middle-aged women’s team.
The decision to come depends on the team. Andrea Fuentes, the head coach, said she was very worried because she was having trouble sleeping.
“I grew up a fan of Bill’s, and we all know him as a pioneer in the sport,” he said. “And he’s a great human being, not just as a swimmer but as a human being. But you have to do what’s best for the team.
May is used to answering questions about her weight this time around, and she’s careful to maintain a sense of appreciation and humility. “I’m nervous myself,” he said during a break in an eight-hour workout at Park Pool, on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, the other day. “But I’ve been involved in this sport for 35 years, and I’m proud and grateful for everything it’s given me.”
Elite Athletes in Glitzy Swimsuits
A mixture of ballet, gymnastics, swimming and the aquatic spectacle of Esther Williams, synchronized swimming, as it is called, was first created at the Olympics in 1984. Glitzy swimsuits, exaggerated makeup (waterproof), dramatic music and antique air. theater may bring to mind the extravaganzas of Busby Berkeley, but artistic swimmers are exceptional athletes with the cardiovascular conditioning of sprinters and the flexibility of gymnasts.
He spent most of his time upside down, holding his breath and keeping himself afloat with his arms. They are not allowed to touch the bottom of the pool, their underwater vision is blurred (goggles are banned in competition) and their routines are so precise and compact in configuration that the slightest misstep can lead to unpleasant collisions and kicks. . It’s not unusual for athletes to get concussions or pass out from the intensity. In 2022, American artistic swimmer Anita Alvarez died and fell to the bottom of the pool after performing a solo routine at the world aquatics championships. Her trainer, Fuentes, jumped in, fully clothed, and pulled her safely to the surface.
The seriousness of this pursuit is in full view on Monday, when the athletes gathered at 6:30 am for a flight of zealous openings on land, culminating in a split that they held for more than a minute each. Then they slathered their faces with zinc-oxide diaper cream as protection from the California sun, put on bathing suits – women wore one-piece suits, small May Speedos – and jumped into 16-foot-deep water.
Except for a 30-minute break in the improvised hot tub, the athletes will spend most of the next 7 ½ hours in the pool. They are given a small corner; others were taken up by swimming laps and, for a time, by members of the UCLA women’s varsity swimming team.
Fuentes regularly creates a soundtrack, a mosaic of music and spoken word with the theme of “water”, and presides painstakingly in each element. He would do the move, he would record it on the iPad and then, treading water using the “eggbeater” leg movement, the athletes would watch the replay, take the instructions and do it all over again. It was stiff and tiring.
Except for a brief bathroom break, not once in the first five hours May never leave the water or rest by, say, hanging on the side of the pool or standing on anything; he spends his downtime treading water and joking with his friends. He is often the first to arrive and the last to leave, doing abs exercises every day, taking a few laps after training, doing special rituals, twice a day.
“His fitness is something else,” said Lara Teixeira, the team’s coach. “He’s a driven guy and whatever he puts his mind to, he’ll do it.” Recovery is harder when you’re 45, she said, and injury is more of a risk. “They take care of all health,” he said. “In some ways, he’s his own coach.”
Join the Syracuse Synchro Cats
May’s story is so singular that it’s hard to see her as an anomaly, someone ahead of her time. He grew up in Syracuse, NY, to a teacher mother and a father who worked as a clerk and security guard. A competitive gymnast and swimmer as a child, she took up artistic swimming at the age of 10, when she joined her sister’s class.
“People often ask, ‘Did you choose artistic swimming?'” May said. “I did not choose. It was waiting for me. The one who chose me.”
Her obsession feels so natural and her parents are so supportive that Mei doesn’t even think about the difference between her and everyone else.
“I don’t think you have to look a certain way,” he said. “I just knew I loved sports.” Once, when she was 14, the family of a girl who lost in an individual competition made fun of her, but most of the time her gender was not a problem. “They treat me like any other athlete,” he said.
He swam with several upstate teams, including the Syracuse Synchro Cats and the Oswego Lakettes, until his coach told him he had nothing to teach. On May 16th head to California to train with the best coach in the country, Chris Carver of the Santa Clara Aquamaids.
Sending her teenage son to California was a difficult decision for his mother, Sharon May. “I thought if I didn’t let him go, I would lose him emotionally,” she said. “This is an opportunity for him. How does it feel to have a mother who won’t let him do this? But inside my heart hurts.”
Carver likes Mei right away – everyone likes Mei – and is impressed by how much she pushes herself and how she keeps herself motivated. “I thought he was going to be great,” he said. “First of all, he is unusual for a man because he is flexible. And he has good and strong legs, but he has an incredible drive and tries to improve himself. He is very humble, very accepting of criticism and criticism and very easy worked on.
May compete nationally because of his great reputation, racking up championships, but the top international events remain closed to people. After training with the US Olympic team in 2004 but cheering from the sidelines during the competition, in Athens, May retired from sports at 25 and moved to Las Vegas. For the next 17 years, he performed in Cirque du Soleil’s aquatic spectacle, O, but remained an advocate for men and an ambassador for artistic swimming.
Then, in 2014, it was announced that men would be able to compete in the world championships the following year in mixed duets, pairs of one man and one woman, as in figure skating. May came out of retirement to compete, and won two medals in two different routines with two different partners: gold in the technical competition, with Christina Jones, and silver in the free competition, with Kristina Lum-Underwood.
More medals followed in other worlds. A few years ago, May left Cirque du Soleil and became the head coach of the Aquamaids, now called Santa Clara Artistic Swimming. But the holy grail – the Olympics – remains elusive. The 2016 and 2020 Games have come and gone: men are still ineligible to compete. That is in 2024 due in large part to a long and spirited campaign in May.
Just Another Athlete – But Old
You have to be a little crazy to love the sport, which offers little in the way of fame or remuneration – some athletes on the US team earn less than $2,000 a month – and May loves it with every fiber of his being. The letters on the license plate are OCWAMAN, a tribute to the Onondaga County Water Authority in Syracuse and the homonym that was captured because, he explained, “AQUAMAN was captured.”
No one is underplaying the odds against him. Although May has competed in (and won) many non-Olympic international championships in men’s and women’s duets, it has been 20 years since she competed in a larger team. The sport is technically more difficult and the judging is stricter these days.
She is ancient in athletic years, 28 years older than the youngest person on the team, 17-year-old Audrey Kwon. His assistant coach, Megan Abarca, has known him for 20 years — since he was 10, and May they trainer. A friend, 25-year-old Natalia Vega, was such a happy girl in her youth that she removed May’s duet partner’s face from the poster, replaced the photo, and sent it to her with a note: “Can I be your duet partner? ” (In fact, the two later paired up, taking fourth place in the mixed duet at the world championships in 2019.)
May made the US team a year ago, as soon as it opened for men, bringing maturity, self-discipline and a sunny disposition. When he was in a pool full of nose-plug-and-goggle-wearing swimmers practicing the same routine all day, six days a week, he seemed like just another athlete, said his teammates.
There are obviously differences, such as the way practice ends with everyone going into the same locker room – except for May. And of course he grew up a generation before his peers.
“I have never been made to feel old except when we talk about movies or music or things that are used around, like various foods and candies,” he said. When he mentioned “The Breakfast Club,” no one knew what he was talking about. “Probably no one has ever seen a phone booth,” he said.
Being a man doesn’t necessarily give you an advantage in artistic swimming, which requires flexibility and endurance. But men have helped push the sport in an exciting direction with complementary skills that help improve athleticism and strength, said Lisa Schott, chair of technical and artistic swimming at World Aquatics, the sport’s governing body.
Schott, who called Mei “an icon and a role model,” dreams of a time when men and women regularly compete on the same team. Equality works both ways, he said: “World Aquatics is about gender inclusion, and we want and welcome men in the sport.”
‘It will destroy’
In one of the ironies in a situation full of people, May appears to be the only male artistic swimmer still standing (or swimming, as the case may be) from any Olympic-bound team. Most countries do not have men currently swimming at any level in team competition. The world’s top male artistic swimmer in the mixed duet, 28-year-old Giorgio Minisini of Italy, was recently denied a place on the Italian Olympic team.
“It would hurt not to make the Olympic team – whether I could have done something different, or worked harder,” May said.
“But even beyond that, my biggest fear is not to see the presence of men in the Olympics,” he added. “To finally have the opportunity to introduce men to the Olympics, to know that the sport is finally included, but not to see that representation – it’s almost like a slap in the face.”
Schott said May had changed the sport by bringing in a new generation like Kenny Gaudet in the US and Britain’s Ranjuo Tomblin who is now rising through the ranks.
“As the sport develops, it becomes faster, stronger and more athletic, we will have a mixed team,” she said. “The only question is, what are we going to do at this Olympics?”