With three days of the Artistic Swimming competition already complete, World Aquatics sat down with one of Aruba’s most accomplished athletes to chat Fukuoka, Doha, and what awaits in the future.
Aruba’s Kyra Hoevertsz is no stranger to the world stage. Having debuted at Barcelona 2013 at the age of just 15, Hoevertsz went on to compete at Kazan 2015, Budapest 2017 and Gwangju 2019, before giving away Artistic Swimming due to the stresses of travel and the limited financial support.
After a brief switch to pool swimming Hoevertsz decided to return to her original discipline for Fukuoka 2023, telling World Aquatics at the time that “I just didn’t feel like I finished my career in the way I wanted to.”
Hoevertsz calls her comeback her ‘second chance’ and despite hailing from the small Caribbean nation of Aruba which is home to just over 100,000 residents, the 25 year-old continues to excel on an international level. She placed fifth in two events at the World Aquatics Artistic Swimming World Cup in 2023, followed up with two solo finals in Fukuoka, and now here in Doha has just finished her first final with a career-best performance in the Women’s Solo Technical.
Kyra, congratulations on that Solo Technical final. A career-best point score - but wow that took a long time for that score to actually come through!
It took forever! It took so long! I told my coach let’s just start talking about something because the camera was on us. It felt like we spoke about everything and they still were not ready. The officials sat down, but then stood up again, it just took forever!
And I guess the longer it takes the more likelihood you’re getting a basemark?
Or more than one basemark! You also then start thinking that if it’s a real discussion then maybe they are seeing something else. So much runs through your head in those three minutes which today felt like ten minutes.
When the score eventually came through though it was impressive! A career-best 227.1683 which is almost 15 points higher than your score in Fukuoka last year (which was also an all-time best at the time). What is the difference between your Fukuoka and Doha performances?
My degree of difficulty is a lot higher than it was last year, almost five points higher, and then my coach decided to up it again for the final so I was really nervous today.
Was increasing your degree of difficulty something you’ve been working on since Fukuoka, or when was the decision made to change your routine for Doha?
Actually after Fukuoka we were training to go to the Pan American Games but I got COVID so was literally out for a month and a half because my body could just not recover. I then started to get really nervous because World Championships was getting closer and closer and I really wanted to go to Doha. When I had recovered we literally had to go back to basics. It was like training as if I was a kid again. I could only train at about 30% capacity it was really, really basic.
So when did the Doha preparation start?
Finally my body just felt ready and I could finally train back at maximum capacity and then during Christmas, we flew to San Francisco to start training with a new coach. The first thing she did was up all of our degrees of difficulty. All our routines for all events were raised to a level that made it impossible to swim but that’s when we actually started pushing ourselves. Like really pushing ourselves to be able to make all those R7’s in our routines.
After you’re done here in Doha will it be back to San Francisco then to keep training?
We’re flying to Aruba after these World Championships but then we're going straight back to San Francisco to keep training. That is where our coach is, and based on these Doha results what we are doing is on the right track, so we just have to keep going. She's an ex-Olympian for China and a World Championships and Olympics medallist, so she’s good. Like really good. She also has really worked on the mental part of the event which in this sport sometimes seems like it’s 90%. She has been a really good balance of pushing us but also reminding us that what she’s giving us we are fully capable of. It’s a good match.
Is it with this coach that you’ve had the chance to connect with Bill May?
We basically use his club’s pool and our coach is a coach of that club. He's down in Los Angeles training with the USA team but he would come back every couple of weekends and he would work with us and help us.
Doha is your sixth World Aquatics Championships and you’re only just hitting your stride with career bests in both Duet and Solo routines here, so what’s the next challenge?
Obviously here at Worlds, we still have the free events and then we are going to try to go to all four World Cups that are coming up this year. Last year we went to two and we were just outside the medals. We were so close and we just really want a medal.
They’re some good travel destinations as well! Beijing in April, Paris in May, Markham in June and Budapest in July. And then what?
Well… we’re actually both going to retire in August.
Retire! Really? I guess it is in much different circumstances to when you gave the sport away after your fourth World Championships and still had unfinished business. Now, like you told me in Fukuoka, you will actually be able to finish your career the way you wanted to.
Yes, and I want to keep studying and get my Master’s Degree and Mikayla (Morales) is going to keep studying so she can get her Bachelor’s Degree. That means we only have a few competitions left so we are going to try to make it the best season ever and to also get Aruba up the rankings as much as possible. Then it will be time to hand it over to the next generation.