Over the coming three nights, ten teams will compete across Team Free, Team Technical, and Team Acrobatic events, with medals awarded based on an aggregate score across all three events. This is the major difference to the World Aquatics Championships, where medals are awarded separately for each event.

The People’s Republic of China have been a strong force at the past two World Championships winning five of six gold medals in the team events, ahead of Spain (one gold, one silver), Japan (two silver, one bronze), United States of America (one silver, three bronze), Ukraine (one silver, one bronze), and Italy (one silver).

Russian Olympic Committee athletes won the Team event at Tokyo 2020, ahead of the People’s Republic of China, and Ukraine. At Tokyo the Team event consisted of just two routines and was conducted under the sport’s previous rules.

In Paris the team competition consists of a single finals phase with all ten teams of eight swimmers performing three routines, across three nights. The final result, and the basis for medals being awarded, is the sum of points from all three team routines.

The Team Technical routine is two-minutes and fifty seconds in length, and consists of five technical elements plus three additional hybrids. One of the hybrids must include a cadence action, and one acrobatic movement must be performed by all team members. These may be placed anywhere in the routine.

The Team Free routine is three-minutes and thirty seconds, and consists of seven free hybrids plus four free team acrobatics movements.

The Team Acrobatic routine is three-minutes, and allows athletes and coaches to use a different skillset to showcase their creativity, power, and strength in the water. The declared difficulty and the difficulty score of this routine are solely based on acrobatics. Hybrids performed in this routine are reflected in the artistic impression score.

Overall, acrobatics are split into four groups: airborne, balance, combined, and platform. For the acrobatic routine, seven acrobatics are required, and at least one from each of these groups must be featured. Teams are free to do any hybrids, but with no declared difficulty assigned, they do not count towards the difficulty score.

Under the new scoring system, routines are choreographed based on categories and assigned a degree of difficulty. Teams are rewarded for their powerful and innovative routines. There is a greater importance given to the technical precision for the team, otherwise a basemark may be applied to a routine for failing to execute a declared degree of difficulty.

This change has made the sport less subjective - the higher the risk, the higher the reward. This will be even further elevated at Paris 2024 with medals awarded as the sum of points across three routines, and not for each single routine.

The shift towards objectivity under the sport’s new rules helps spectators understand team performance and results, in turn making the sport more exciting and less predictable. The increased reward for a higher degree of difficulty chosen for the routine also makes the sport more strategic. A team may play it safe, or they may decide to risk everything for extreme athleticism. 

The Artistic Swimming Team Event commences tonight (Monday 5th August) at the Olympic Aquatics Centre, Paris.