Olmps

gold.. Japan was excluded from the first post-war Games in 1948, which meant that the great Hironoshin Furuhashi – the fastest swimmer on the planet – was unable to compete..

Hollywood’s Olympic Tarzans

Many actors have played Edgar Rice Burroughs’‘King of the Jungle’ on TV and in the cinema,but in the classic

black-and-white eraTarzan was defined by four American Olympians, two of them swimmers.

Johnny Weissmuller, who won five

swimming gold medals in 1924 and

1928, got his break asTarzan in 1932 and kept the part until 1948. As well as hisTarzan water dives, he invented the ullulations that defined the movie version of the character.

Buster Crabbe, who won a swimming bronze medal in 1928 and a gold in 1932, was cast asTarzan in 1933 by a competing studio.A twelve-

movie run was planned but Crabbe jumped ship and got himself cast as Flash Gordon and later as Buck Rogers.

Hermann Brix, silver medallist in the shot put in 1928, was poised to be cast asTarzan but broke his shoulder and lost the gig to Weissmuller. He got a second chance in 1935, cast in The New Adventures of Tarzan, from which a second film – Tarzan and the Green Goddess

– was spun off in 1938. He then changed his name to Bill Bennet and did a couple of decades of character roles.

Glen Morris, who took gold in the decathlon in 1932, made Tarzan’s Revenge in 1938.His acting was rightly lambasted and he swiftly moved into insurance sales.

272 HOW TO WATCH THE OLYMPICS

After their annihilation in 1932, the Americans improved at Berlin 1936 and would have done even better if gold medal prospect Eleanor Holm had not been kicked out of the squad for drunken misbehaviour during the Atlantic crossing..After the war, however, the USA swept everyone aside, winning eight out of eleven gold medals in 1948, and ten out of twelve in 1952..A rare non-American champion was Jean Boiteaux, whose victory in the 400m freestyle prompted his overwrought father to leap into the pool fully clothed..

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s America ruled the swimming world, challenged only occasionally by Australia. . Mark Spitz’s seven golds at the Munich Olympics was both a personal triumph and a measure of American supremacy.. But the 1970s witnessed the rise of East German swimming, and in just two drug-fuelled decades of top-level competition they accumulated 38 golds in the pool. .The women’s team was particularly strong: in Montreal in 1976 Kornelia Ender won eight medals, four of them gold, while in Seoul in 1988 Kirstin Otto won six gold medals..

Since the demise of European communism, the USA has resumed its place as the most powerful presence in swimming, albeit with consistent challenges from Australia, China and the Neth- erlands – and, in recent years, a much improved British team.. Chinese women’s swimming was particularly strong for a while, but has suffered greatly from the much stricter doping tests that are now in operation..

Goldrush: 10 Great Olympic Swimmers

Ten of the greats – in order of appearance.

1. Charles Daniels, USA (Gold 5, Silver 1, Bronze 2)

The leading swimmer of his era, Daniels was a well-heeled banker who loved to swim and was pretty damn good at golf, too. He went to three consecutive Games – 1904, 1906, 1908 – and won gold medals at all of them, having been the first Olympic swimmer to perfect the powerful six-beat kick.

SYNCHRONISED

SWIMMING

5–9 August, 2012

AqUATICS Centre, Olympic Park

Athletes: 104 | Golds up for grabs: 2

Olympic presence

Exhibition sport 1952 and at four other Games. Full

medal event since 1984..

Olympic Format

Synchronised swimming launched as a solo and a

duet event in 1984, became just a team event in 1996, and in 2000 reverted to the original format.. Like rhythmic gymnastics, synchronised swimming is a women-only Olympic sport..

Contenders:

In both events the Russians are the swimmers to beat.

Usual challengers include Canada, USA, Japan and France, and you can expect serious performances from Spain, China and

Australia..

Past Champions:

Russia: 6 | USA: 5 | Canada: 3

Why Watch Synchronised

Swimming?

Benjamin Franklin was extraordinary: inventor, sci-

entist, man of letters, signatory to the American Declaration of Independence, US Post Master General, and ambassador to France.. In his spare time he was a keen swimmer and at one point contemplated becoming a swimming coach.. Fortunately for American public life he concentrated his energies on more elevated occupations, but his contribution to aquatic pursuits was significant, which is why he’s now a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.. He re-engineered the swimming flipper, carried out an early form of kite water-skiing, and in 1726, in London, he gave the first recorded exhibition of ‘ornamental swimming’..

‘At the request of the company, I stripped and leaped in the river, and swam from near Chelsea to Blackfriars, performing on the way many feats of activity, both upon and under water, that surprised and pleased those to whom they were novelties.. I had from a child been ever delighted with this exercise, had studied and practised all Thevenot’s motions and positions, added some of my own, aiming at graceful and easy as well as useful..All these I took occasion of exhibiting to the company, and was much flattered by their admiration..’

For the next two hundred years or so we find occasional references to swimmers performing water ballet and other such forms of aquatic art, but swimming as a sport has long been about speed rather than grace.. Synchronised swimming, the direct descendant of these activities, appeared on the Olympics stage at Los Angeles 1984

– and then only for women.. In fact, men have only very recently begun to compete in the sport and do not yet have an Olympic event..

Derision is often heaped upon the sport for its cheesy aesthetics and its reliance on subjective scoring, but neither of these aspects should dissuade you from taking a look: synchronised swimming is a mercilessly demanding form of competition, requiring immense core strength, great agility, perfect timing and huge lungs..Yes, it’s sequin-heavy and the grins are unnervingly fixed, but that’s to be expected in an event that’s a cousin to the Hollywood musical..And who, in their heart, doesn’t love a song and dance act?

278 HOW TO WATCH THE OLYMPICS

in 1911 Kellerman debuted in her first movie, rather predictably entitled The Mermaid. . Further aquatic adventures followed in

Neptune’s Daughter (1914) and A Daughter of the Gods (1916), the first movie with a million-dollar budget..

Hollywood’s enthusiasm for water ballet dried up in the mid1920s, but the style of aquatic gymnastics pioneered and popularised by Kellerman found a new home in women’s swimming clubs across North America.. Swimming coach Katherine Curtis, who first experimented with combining aquatic routines with music while a student at the University of Wisconsin, founded a water ballet club at the University of Chicago in 1923.. In 1939 the city held the first recorded water ballet competition, between the Chicago Teachers’ College (coached by Curtis) and Wright Junior College..

If American colleges and amateur sports clubs provided the places where this form of swimming could develop as a sport, it was Hollywood and vaudeville that defined its aesthetic and increased its popularity.. In 1934, sixty of Curtis’s students performed as the ‘Modern Mermaids’ at the Chicago World’s Fair..The event announcer, Olympic swimming gold medallist Norman Ross, used the phrase ‘synchronised swimming’ to describe it, thereby coining the name under which that sport would be accepted as a competitive event by the American Athletic Union in 1941..

The rave reviews for the Chicago show encouraged vaudeville entrepreneur Billy Rose to stage Aquacade at the Great Lakes Exhibition in 1937. . Success there prompted Rose to go for broke with a much more extravagant version of the show at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.. Held in a specially built 11,000-seat outdoor amphitheatre, with the accompaniment of a full orchestra, Aquacade starred Olympic swimming gold medallists Johnny Weissmuller and Eleanor Holm, plus a cast of hundreds..The performance combined formation swimming, comic clowning on the high board and synchronised diving – and it went down a storm..When the show transferred to San Francisco the following year, Holm was replaced by a new star: Esther Williams..

Williams had been a top level competitive swimmer, but with no Olympics to go to in 1940, Aquacade seemed like the best gig

MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID: ESTHER WILLiams STARRING IN THE EPONYMOUS MOvie, 1952

going.. MGM scouts were impressed and signed her up, casting her in romantic comedies, frothy musicals and lightweight dramas, inevitably with a swimming subplot.. In 1952 Williams starred in the defining movie of the aqua-musical genre, Million Dollar Mermaid, a super-hydrated Technicolor pageant perfectly attuned to its subject

– it was a biopic of Annette Kellerman.. Choreographed by Busby Berkeley,Williams cavorted against a backdrop of water slides, surfers and river nymphs, defining for ever the image of the artistic swimmer: effortless, despite the enormous difficulty of what she was doing, and flawlessly made-up, with a preference for gold lamé, tiaras and cherry-red lipstick..The public loved the movie, and flocked to Esther’s follow-ups, like the following year’s Dangerous When Wet..

Williams retired in the early 1960s and a decade passed before the baton of theatrical synchronised swimming was taken up again, by choreographer Charlie Phillips.. In the mid-1970s Phillips formed a troupe calledThe Kroftettes who peaked in popularity when they danced with Miss Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper, ensuring that another generation of young American women would come into the sport..

Game On: Synchronised Basics

Synchronised swimming is a form of competitive dance,

in which the swimmers must move in time with each other and the music, performing a variety of strokes, twists, turns and lifts. . Participants may not touch the bottom of the three-metre-deep pool and must keep themselves aloft with a combination of sculls (small hand movements) and eggbeater strokes (made with the legs)..