What's new at Paris 2024? The revolution in the artistic swimming team event

At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, breaking will make its debut while other sports will feature revised formats and disciplines. To keep you up to date, Olympics.com is bringing you everything you need to know about what’s new at Paris 2024.

So, it's time to get to know why the team event at artistic swimming is going to make history at the next Olympic Games.

Artistic swimming has a long-tradition on the Olympic programme, debuting at Los Angeles 1984. Since Sydney 2000, the format hasn't changed – even though the name has, from synchronised swimming to its current iteration in 2017 – with artistic swimmers competing in two different events, women’s duet and women’s team, with a set of medals on offer in each.

Both were judged based on scores earned from a technical and a free routine.

While the women’s duet will remain the same at Paris 2024, the team event will see a revolution based on two main changes:

• Men are eligible to compete
• The introduction of the acrobatic routine

Men's inclusion in the artistic swimming team event at Paris 2024

Paris 2024 has set a milestone in artistic swimming, with the next Olympic Games marking the first time in history that men can compete at the team event, enabling gender parity in the sport.

A total of 10 teams will compete in Paris.

Each is made up of eight swimmers and, since the IOC decision on 22 December 2022, men are eligible to be part of those teams, with a maximum of two per team.

Although it is not mandatory for the teams to include men, this new rule has already seen its first and inclusive consequences.

At the recent European Games 2023, Italy’s Giorgio Minisini made history by becoming the first man ever to compete in a team event in a major senior competition.

Minisini did it in style, with Italy winning three medals in the team event – silver in both the technical and free routines; bronze in the acrobatic discipline – adding to the gold in the technical mixed duet and silver in free mixed duet.

“We are now walking on a path towards inclusivity that will bring hope and opportunities to all athletes in our sport,” said Minisini about the rule change on his Instagram account.

Minisini is the personification of the dream coming true but is not the only pioneer in men’s artistic swimming.

Being a trailblazer is something intrinsic when it comes to men and artistic swimming. As the French swimmer Quentin Rakotomalala, the bronze medallist at the first men’s solo event at the European Championships, in 2022, explains, the aim is to "change people's mentalities, change these stereotypes that we have of the synchro swimmer full of glitter to show a sport that can be inclusive and mixed”.

And now, the Olympics will be the ultimate showcase of the changes.

What is the acrobatic routine in artistic swimming?

Men's inclusion is not the only revolutionary change in Olympic artistic swimming.

At Paris 2024, the team event will have three sessions: the two already included in the Olympic programme – technical and free – and now, the acrobatic routine.

That means the medals in the team event will be now determined by the total of the scores from the three routines.

But what is exactly the acrobatic routine?

The acrobatic routine, “challenges judges to identify and evaluate difficulty, execution and artistic impression of complex structures, airborne movements and a wide diversity of acrobatic action combinations”, explains World Aquatics.

The acrobatics are divided into four main groups of movements, judged on the following prerequisites:

• A (airborne): all elements are performed in the air
• B (balance): all elements are performed on a support/base
• C (combined): include elements from group A and B
• P (platform): this group of acrobatics is judged based on the effort and difficulty performed by the swimmers to create a stable support in which one or more members are lifted to do actions other than fly (static pose or moving)

The teams need to perform a total of seven acrobatic moves, with at least one from each of the groups above.

The acrobatic routine, formerly known as Highlight, is relatively new in the sport as it made its debut at the World Championships in 2019.

Five years later, fans will be equally wowed at the Olympics, with these two revolutionary new additions that will make the team event even more thrilling.