Artistic swimming an under-recognised sport, but Singapore's young swimmers thriving regionally

SINGAPORE — As the group of eight teenagers walked out to the competition pool at New Clark City Aquatics Centre in Capas, the Philippines, the girls began feeling nervous even though they had trained long and hard for this important moment.

To calm their nerves, they came up with a simple idea: They placed their hands, in a stacking manner, on top of one another and shouted "Jiayou!", a common expression of motivation in Mandarin, to hype themselves up and get rid of the nervous energy.

"It helped us to be mentally prepared to put our best performance so that we can achieve what we wanted," said 16-year-old Rachel Ho, the captain of the team.

Rachel and her seven friends are Singapore's National Youth Team for artistic swimming, a sport which combines swimming, dancing and gymnastics and requires great strength, endurance, flexibility, artistry and timing. 

They were in New Clark City from Feb 26 to March 9 to compete at the 11th Asian Age Group Aquatics Championship, a competition focused on aquatic sports including artistic swimming.

The National Youth Team together with the Singapore 12 and Under Team clinched a total of one silver and two bronze medals respectively at the championship, which Singapore Aquatics said is their best performance since the artistic swimming scoring system was updated by World Aquatics in January 2023.

World Aquatics is the international federation that administers international competitions in water sports.

Artistic swimming has grown in popularity in recent years, said Singapore Aquatics' vice president of artistic swimming Steve Chew.

But even as the number of young artistic swimmers here has grown in recent years, the sport remains underfunded, he added. 

"For artistic swimmers in particular, more funds would allow us to bring the teams for more international competitions and training opportunities overseas, which will allow them to have more exposure to international judges and technical officials," said Mr Chew.

He added that the funds raised will also provide artistic swimmers with the resources they need to train, compete, and represent Singapore with pride on the global stage. 

As Singapore Aquatics continues to see more artistic swimmers join the sport, the organisation hopes to build a conducive environment to develop talent.

"This is part of our efforts to reinforce Singapore as a regional hub for aquatics. We also have to commend our artistic swimmers, as their achievements across all age groups inspires more athletes to take up the sport," added Mr Chew.

Among these artistic swimmers is 13-year-old Isabella Lim, who clinched a bronze medal for a solo artistic swimming routine at the recent championship and also placed in the top 10 with her partner for the duets competition.

"I feel quite proud of myself, though I still feel like I can do better. But I also feel kind of relieved that the competition is over and I feel like I am not so stressed," she told TODAY.

Isabella started out as a swimmer as a younger child but pivoted to artistic swimming at around nine years old as she found swimming "boring".

The new sport gradually turned into a passion when she encountered older girls training at her swimming club and aspired to be just like them.

Since she started, Isabella has become an experienced soloist, competing in different countries and even attending a masterclass in Dubai with Olympic medalist Anastasia Arkhipovskaya. 

She hopes to eventually make it onto the National Youth Team, which takes in swimmers aged 13 to 15, and then the National Team, to help Singapore make it to the Olympics.

For the National Youth Team, which currently comprises eight girls aged between 14 and 16, the route to the 11th Asian Age Group Aquatics Championship was not without its challenges.

One major one was coming together as a team, as they each came from different swimming clubs with dissimilar training styles.

"I think some people were also from clubs that were not exposed to team events, so it was harder for them to come together as a team," said Rachel.

The team explained that they eventually got used to each other, including the coach, and adapted to the different training style.

"I think we were really happy that we were able to surpass our expectations at the competition because we initially did not think that we will be able to achieve such good results," she said.

She added that she feels the team dynamic changed after they had participated in different competitions overseas, because the members started to get to know each other better and were able to create cherished memories together.

16-year-old Lauren Teo chimed in: "A lot of us are quite sad now, because we are not like a team anymore since we are not going to see each other that often."

As four of the members are now 16, the recent championship was the last time they could compete as part of the National Youth Team. 

Even though most of them were still undecided if they would pursue artistic swimming as professional athletes, many said they want to continue training as artistic swimmers.

Fifteen-year-old LeAnn Koh, the vice-captain of the National Youth Team, quipped: "You put in so much effort already with many years of hard work. Why would you want to just stop and not go further? Wouldn't it be a waste?"