WAIS athlete Danielle Kettlewell blogs below, about her journey towards realising an Olympic dream. She along with fellow WAIS synchronised swimmers; Danielle ten Van Holt, Deborah Tsai, Amie Thompson and Rose Stackpole will next week compete at the selection trials at Perth’s HBF Stadium.
Now with all the hype that we have had preparing all of the club teams for Perth Nationals next week, a lot of people may not know that for the five of us (the WA based girls listed above), Olympic Team Trials are in one week!
On April 4-6th at HBF Stadium, the five of us from West Coast Splash will each be fighting for a spot on that plane to Rio.
At the moment, the National Team Squad is made up of 12 athletes, five from WA, four from Queensland and three from Victoria.
As Olympic rules state; each country’s Synchro Team is only allowed to take nine athletes to the Games. For all other Synchro competitions around the World, countries may bring 12+ athletes to a meet, but as we all know, the Olympics are special.
The Games are expensive. It is costly for countries to send athletes and even more expensive for the host country to host all of those athletes. It is for this reason, that IOC (International Olympic Committee) puts a cap on how many athletes per sport are allowed to attend.
This number is usually based off the number of medalling events there are. For example, in Synchro at Olympic level, the only opportunities to win a medal are in the Team or Duet Event. Whereas sports like swimming, where they have so many different events for both men and woman, they can accept many more athletes as a result. Therefore Synchronized Swimming is only allowed 104 athletes, which is a combination of 24 duets and eight teams (all teams have a duet included in the total 24).
For our Trials, there are four international level judges being flown in from Holland, Switzerland, Malaysia, Japan and a referee from England who will have 100% say over our Olympic fate. As you may know, the National Team has a Technical and a Free routine.
The Technical routine has certain elements which must be performed during the routine. Our Trials are made up of three different days; April 4th for Tech Team, April 5th for Free Team and April 6th for Duet. For Tech Team we will swim the elements individually in front of the judges, then swim the routine individually. Lastly we will swim the routine a total of six times in our eight man pattern and be judged one of the six times at a random draw.
For this combination to work, each athlete must know two spots, swims in pattern four times and swim twice on the side. It is confusing, trust me I know.
Free team selections is exactly the same minus the elements. Our scores will be added up (Tech worth 60% and Free worth 40%) then we will be ranked 1 through 12. Duet on the third day has a similar structure to the team routines, however with only three athletes competing for the two spots. Rose (WAIS athlete Rose Stackpole) from WCS is trialling for one of those two spots in duet.
The Trials are open to spectators if you are interested, but we please ask to be respectful and quiet during the simulation. We are happy to have your support, but we will all be “in the zone and for our own focus, will most likely not acknowledge the spectators. I would just like to forewarn, so no-one thinks we are being dismissive.
I wish I could describe the variety of emotions I feel in anticipation for trials. It ranges from anxiety, stress and nausea to excitement and hopefully relief. For many of us we have been swimming longer than the 12 & Unders have been alive. The amount of early morning wakeups and days of school missed for synchro are mind boggling. We have sacrificed time with our friends and family at the drop of a hat. Parties, fun holidays and weekends away were given up without question so we could swim.
The amount of tears shed over synchro could fill up whole pools. But at the end of the day, none of it matters because synchro has given us determination and fight. It has given us fearless heart but also a gentle one, it has given us passion and love and inspiration. It is ingrained into the very fabric of our being and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Our whole synchro career has been leading up to this pinnacle.
Now I am sharing this because we really need the whole West Coast Splash community on our side. We’ve been working our butts off but we’ll take all the finger crossing, prayers and good wishes we can. Anything to help us all achieve our goal and proudly represent our country in Rio.
Now lastly may I say, if in my favour or not. I wouldn’t take back one tear shed, one missed holiday or one early morning. Every moment has been worth it, Olympics or not because it has been one heck of a journey and it has made me who I am today.
Signing off,
Danielle Kettlewell
