New Zealand hasn’t been represented at the Olympics for duet artistic swimming (also known as synchronised swimming) since 2008. Sixteen years later, two young trailblazers hope to break the dry spell.
Nina Brown, 20, and Eva Morris, 26, were selected as a duet in December 2023.
Morris uprooted her life in Tauranga to join Brown on the Gold Coast, where they started training together immediately under renowned coach Marina Kholod. Seven weeks later, they competed for the first time as a duet on the world stage at the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships.
Brown and Morris are currently ranked 18th worldwide for duet artistic swimming. Pretty good, but not good enough to get them to Paris in August.
Over the next four months, they will compete in Malta, Hungary, Australia, and Canada in an effort to make the top 16 ranking required by the New Zealand Olympic Committee to qualify for the Olympics.
There is a lot of pressure but, to these athletes, it’s just water off an artistic swimmer’s back.
“I think we know that everyone is proud of us no matter how we do,” said Brown.
That doesn’t mean they’ll take it easy on the Gold Coast. Brown and Morris live together, eat together, and train together, and their lives revolve around artistic swimming.
Putting pressure on
“We often put the most pressure on ourselves. We’re very self-critical, so we go home, watch the videos, and go, OK, what can we do to be better?” shared Morris.
Artistic swimming is a sport that combines performance and athleticism.
At the Olympics, there are two events, technical and free. Each duet performs the same set of five moves for the technical event. As the name suggests, the free duet gives the teams more freedom.
“It’s just up to you, so you can do whatever you want, which makes it a bit harder because your coach can get really creative and make you make high-difficulty things,” said Morris.
While most people in their 20s are sculling beers, Brown and Morris will be perfecting their sculling technique (figure-eight like motions with your arms to keep afloat) in the pool to hopefully compete against the best in the world at the 2024 Olympics.
It’s a big sacrifice and will take a lot of hard work and dedication, but as Morris said, “You don’t get this opportunity very often, so you have to take it with both hands if you do.”