Synchronized swimming has been practiced since the late 1890's. The actual origins of synchronized swimming are very interesting as this sport originated as simple life saving training. But then it evolved into something bigger and more attractive. It became a sort of ballet on the water. And in early synchronized swimming, male actors took part unlike modern synchronized swimming. That male kind of sport had different names at the time - it was known as scientific, ornamental, and artistic or pattern swimming. And of course major rules of these early synchronized swimming competitions were different. But in the 20th century women came into that sport and that changed early synchronized swimming.

And still until middle of the 20th century early synchronized swimming was only a demonstration sport. And as a demonstration sport this early synchronized swimming was represented on Olympics in 1954. But already in 1984 synchronized swimming was a part of Olympic program.

Modern synchronized swimming is completely different and has not that much in common with early synchronized swimming. These days events in synchronized swimming include duet and team competitions for women only. Duet synchronized swimming usually consists of preliminary part (women perform so-called technical routine here) of the competition and so called free routine. Team competitions in synchronized swimming contain no preliminary part. All the team members (there are usually eight of them) perform their free programs right away.

The technical part of competition usually consists of pretty rigid set of element. Swimmer can select the music they are going to perform with but they must perform the strict set moves in a predefined order. Special committee in synchronized swimming sets all the rules and the order of element every four years. The time of each program is also predefined.

And as you can easily guess, in the free program swimmers can select both the music and their movements. The main goal here is the creativity of the performance. Of course, it is much better that the free program includes technically difficult elements. The duration of free program is four minutes for duets and five minutes for teams of swimmers. Team competition often includes special air movements when team member pushes another member out of the water. Different sorts of pretty complex flips are made in these pushes. Some of these pushes are performed so that they look like jumps. Of course, it is not possible to jump on water so team members have to provide special support which is also judged.

Scoring, in fact, in that kind of sport is not that easy. Of course, it is easy to judge technical elements but when it comes to free part of the program it becomes difficult. It is not that easy to judge creativity of the swimmers. In both technical and free programs special sorts of penalties are also being applied. That makes scoring procedure a little easier. Different penalties points are used for free and technical programs. And these days all the calculations are performed with the use of computers and special software.