2024 World Aquatics Championships: Team USA's artistic swimmers prepare to battle for Olympic spot in Paris
They marginally missed the mark in 2023 and now Team USA’s artistic swimmers go for their last chance to qualify for the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Will they obtain one of the final spots up for grabs in Doha, and who is their toughest competition?
Artistic Swimming
Team USA’s artistic swimmers are feeling the pressure of a lifetime as they prepare for their last chance to secure a place at Paris 2024.
Kicking off on 2 February, 15 nations will go head-to-head for the five remaining team quotas at the 2024 FINA World Aquatics Championships. The United States qualified a duet through the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, but are desperate to secure a team spot for the first time in almost two decades.
It was by just 0.66 of a point — out of nearly 800 — that kept them from securing the team Olympic quota in Santiago. Head coach Andrea Fuentes explained that the difference was so marginal, it was likely due to a leg being one inch lower for a single second in one of the three routines that lost them the quota.
Having been so close they could taste it, Team USA is walking into Doha hungry for that quota.
Since Santiago, they have been training eight hours a day, six days a week in San Diego with just one goal in mind: Olympic qualification.
At the World Championships in 2023, they left their mark by taking third place in the team category behind China and Japan. It was their best finish since 2007 and the momentum is only speeding up.
For one athlete, the pursuit of Olympic glory carries an extra layer of significance.
Bill May, a 45-year-old male swimmer, has been winning national titles since the ‘90s and has harbored Olympic dreams from long before then. For over a decade, that was the farthest he could go as a male in the sport and was even unable to compete internationally. In 2004, he watched from the sidelines as his team competed in the Athens Olympic Games without him.
Now – two decades later – everything is different and he is laser focused on Paris.
It is the first Games that men will be allowed to compete in the team competition and after a successful career, 10 years of retirement and the comeback of a lifetime, May is giving everything he has to fulfill his decades old Olympic dream.
Team USA’s biggest competition in Doha
With 10 nations to compete in the Paris team competition, quotas have already been attributed through continental qualifiers and France through being the host country.
The stakes are much higher for the remaining countries, who all fighting for the final five team spots.
Japan has been incredibly strong in the sport in recent years, having dominated the 2023 World Championships and just missed the Tokyo 2020 podium, finishing in fourth. They are a strong contender for one of the five spots.
The showdown between European countries will be ultra-competitive, as France obtained the continental quota by being the host country. Spain finished second to Japan on the medal table at the 2023 World Championships, ahead of the U.S. and People’s Republic of China. Italy finished just behind the U.S., but took fifth in Tokyo.
A number of countries have a level of unpredictability going into Doha, including Ukraine who took bronze in Tokyo, but finished tied for ninth at the Worlds in 2023.
Canada qualified a team in Tokyo and finished in sixth behind Italy, but largely missed the quota opportunity in Santiago, finishing in third.
To watch the action in Doha live, tune into World Aquatics Channel on Recast for preliminaries and Peacock for finals.