Artistic Swimming in New Zealand is taking a giant leap forward in Paris as Eva Morris and Nina Brown become the first non-sibling duet to compete for the nation at an Olympic Games.
It’s been a whirlwind twelve months for artistic swimming pair Eva Morris and Nina Brown. This time last year the duet were living in different countries, training in different programs, having never competed together in the pool. Fast forward to Paris, and the pair will be stepping out for their first Olympic Games in front of a packed Paris crowd, as one of the top sixteen duets in the world.
With Australia earning a duet spot at the Olympics through their team qualification, New Zealand qualified for the duet through the Oceania Continental Selection, however for Morris and Brown, this was just the start of the pair’s qualification journey.
“The New Zealand Olympic Committee had set a bar meaning you needed a certain ranking to be part of the New Zealand team,” Morris explains.
“It’s a blanket rule across all individual sports, and we're classed as an individual sport, so to be part of the team we had to prove the ability to finish top sixteen. I guess it comes down to funding and the need to produce good results. But that was our biggest hurdle.”
“So even though New Zealand had a qualification spot, we needed to ensure we were ranked at least sixteenth in the world as a duet and so our journey began to Malta, Budapest, and Markham, in search of an improved world ranking.”
For a sport that relies on synchronicity, the first step was the obvious need for one of the pair to relocate to ensure they were living in the same city.
“When we were selected Eva relocated over to the Gold Coast to train with me under our coach Marina Kholod,” explains Brown.
“We could have trained together back home in New Zealand, but Nina was already based here, Marina was here, and it was important that with the short time we had that we had a coach that could meet all of our requirements,” adds Morris.
“We obviously had to do a lot of international travel, and for other coaches to pick up and leave their clubs is not practical, but Marina runs her own club and also has a lot of experience as a coach having produced a lot of Olympians. We’re very luck to work with her.
The pair’s first major competition in their pursuit of improving their world ranking was the World Aquatics Championships at Doha 2024. They placed 33rd in the Women’s Duet Free and 36th in the Women’s Duet Technical, but more importantly, learned a lot about each other and their routines.
Morris and Brown then embarked on a series of competitions through Malta, Hungary, and Canada, chasing that elusive world ranking that would enable the New Zealand Olympic Committee to ratify their selection.
Greatly aiding this journey was the news the pair were recipients of a World Aquatics Scholarship aimed at developing aquatic sports in emerging nations.
“The scholarship came at the perfect time” says Morris.
“Obviously, we knew that we were committing to this campaign, and then we got the scholarship and it's just taken a huge weight off our shoulders. Financially it allows us to cover the costs of our coach Marina and our international travel to a lot of competitions.”
“In New Zealand it is an unfunded sport - it’s all user pays. So not only does it take the stress off our parents’ bank accounts, but also when we were in Doha we were super fortunate to get to the seminars and events which are so valuable because you learn so much from being around other scholarship athletes.”
“I don't think that we would have been able to go to the amount of competitions, and bring our coach, and be comfortable at those competitions, if it wasn't for the scholarship,” adds Brown.
“Otherwise we would have had to really had to limit our schedule.”
After competing on the road across Europe and the Americas, the pair’s world ranking improved, and last month their qualification was ratified by the New Zealand Olympic Committee. The pair have now arrived in Paris and next week will become just the third duet to represent their nation at a Summer Olympics behind Lisa & Nina Daniels at Beijing 2008, and Katie & Lynette Sadleir at the Los Angeles 1984.