August 13, 2022, 12:56 PM
August 13, 2022, 12:56 PM
In Rome, the European artistic swimming championships have experienced a great novelty with the first men’s solo trialsa “historic” and “magical” moment for the pioneers of the discipline, who hope to see how their sport gains followers.
“I feel like saying ‘finally’!” says Virginie Dedieu, the three-time French world champion in synchronized swimming. “There’s no reason why that shouldn’t exist.”
History will retain that it was the Italian Giorgio Minisini, who at 26 years old became the first solo European champion to win the technical test with 85.7033 points, ahead of the Spanish Fernando Díaz del Río (79.4951 points) and Serbian Ivan Martinovic (58.8834 points).
“It was very important to be here, for the judges to finally see men participating in this test. It was a historic moment, I can’t wait to see how far our sport can go now. Being one of the first guys to take part in this event was magical,” Minisini reacted.
“I take this gold as a starting point for me and for the whole movement,” he added to the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport.
For the Italian, who performed his first dances on the water when he was just four years old, artistic swimming is a family story. His mother Susanna De Angelis is a former synchronized swimmer and his father Roberto Minisini a former international judge of the discipline.
Mixed duo since 2015
The Italian was already present in 2015 when synchronized swimming was first opened to both genders. It was at the World Cups in Kazan, Russia, where the International Federation inaugurated the mixed duo category.
The American Bill May or the Frenchman Benoît Beaufils were also some of the pioneers.
At that time it was a major innovation for this sport, often associated with grace and elegance, qualities generally considered “feminine”.
“It is always said blue for boys and pink for girls, or dance for girls and judo for boys. Well, no, we can do everything,” claims Virginie Dedieu.
On Sunday, Minisini will have the opportunity to win a second medal in the free solo event. Among his rivals is Frenchman Quentin Rakotomalala. “He’s someone I admire a lot so I find it funny to swim competing against him,” confessed the 19-year-old Frenchman, who started artistic swimming following in his sister’s footsteps.
“One day, a coach suggested I try it because she saw that I loved it and that I went to see all the galas,” she explains. What he liked the most was “the artistic part, the dance part. I have loved water since I was little. All this together made it something really made for me”.
However, he acknowledges that the gaze of others sometimes weighed on him. “Today things are better, but when he was little he saw the incomprehension, the questioning in people’s eyes.”
“If you feel like it, go and hit it”
“Sometimes I was embarrassed to say what I did, so I just said I did swimming. I trained with kids who didn’t understand how a boy could do a female sport. But now I totally own it.”
On Sunday, he will don his nose clip to swim to the melancholy music of Benjamin Clementine.
Their medal options will be high since there are only five registered athletes, proof of the short distance still in this discipline in the men’s category.
The creation of this category and its broadcast on television in the framework of the European Championships can create vocations, the actors of artistic swimming want to believe.
“It’s an opportunity to say (to young boys) that it’s possible. If you feel like it, go and give it a go,” smiles Virginie Dedieu.
