Why Isn’t There a US Synchronized Swimming Team in Rio? – The Atlantic

And when synchronized swimming made its Olympic debut in the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, it was the Americans Tracie Ruiz and Candy Costie who won the gold for the duet, the only synchro event that first year. In the Atlanta Games of 1996, the U.S. again made history, winning the first gold medal for the newly inaugurated team event (the duet event was taken off the program in 1996 but returned four years later).

After 1996, however, the entire American synchronized-swimming team retired, and USA Synchro faced the task of rebuilding its national program. At the same time, the competition abroad was becoming more seasoned. “I think after 1996 when we won, everybody just kind of got serious with their programs,” says Shari Darst, the education director at USA Synchro. As a result, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney proved to be a total game-changer. For the first time in the sport’s Olympic history, the U.S. failed to bring home a single medal, while Russia won its first two—both gold. The trend has continued, with Russia winning every Olympic gold medal since, while the last medals the United States won were two bronzes in 2004.

In the U.S., Olympic sports receive their funding allotment from the non-governmental U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) according to past performance. Dubbed “money for medals,” the system doles out the most support to sports winning the most medals, and reduces funding for those that come home empty-handed. With only two medal events per Olympiad, synchronized swimming is at a disadvantage compared to sports like swimming, gymnastics, and track and field with numerous events, and thus far more medal opportunities. That, combined with the sport’s failure to medal in the last two Olympiads, has resulted in the USOC cutting its 2015 funding for synchronized swimming to the lowest point it’s been in at least 17 years.

Even so, the U.S. team is up against countries like Russia, China, and even Italy, where the government provides extensive support for its national sports programs. Russian synchronized swimmers training at the national level, for example, earn comfortable salaries—plus generous performance-based cash awards and valuable prizes like cars—that allow them to stay in the sport long enough to participate in multiple Olympiads.