5/6/2023 0 Comments Egypt olympic games tokyo 2020![]() N: The ESF’s Chairman Yasser Idris is offering unprecedented support to artistic swimming in recent years. What kind of support does the ESF offer to your team? I’m a partner in one of these academies, and I think the sport has started to gather attention recently, as I see there is a trend of expanding water ballet academies around Egypt’s governorates, with academies in Sharm El-Sheikh searching for water ballet trainers. Now, Al-Ahly SC and the Shooting Club are definitely the top artistic swimming schools in Egypt, but, lately, many artistic swimming academies have popped up in New Cairo, 6 October City, and in Smouha Sporting Club as well. Incidentally, artistic swimming, previously known as synchronized swimming, started in Egypt in the sixties. We spend 10 hours daily, six days a week training hard to perform a four minutes routine and proudly represent our country at the end. The training alone is divided into five parts: swimming, gymnastics, flexibility, endurance, and strength. N: I do not know why, but it is one of the most difficult sports in the world. ![]() Why is artistic swimming not gaining popularity in Egypt? It was too short a period to get the required training, in addition to a very limited time to train in the pool, so ESF offered the team underwater earphones in order to make our training easier in a very limited time at the Olympic Village it was actually a brilliant use of technology. N: We arrived at the Olympic Village in Tokyo five days ahead of our first performance because of regulations imposed against COVID-19. ![]() Source: What was the biggest challenge you faced in Tokyo? ![]() We were able to resume our normal training back in September. We then shifted to online training through the first stage of the pandemic, and it was a very hard period, as artistic swimming is not an individual sport, and the training needs to be done in person. Since then, we were training on a daily basis until the COVID-19 outbreak. These places qualified us to take part in Tokyo 2020. We were 17th in the free routine and 16th in the technical routine in the Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) World Championships in 2019 in Gwangju, South Korea. N: I definitely feel proud to be the only Arab team, and to represent Egyptians and Arab women at the Olympics. Egypt’s artistic swimming team is the only Arab team participating in the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, tell us more about the journey to reach this place? It takes many phases to settle on a final selection, which depends on many factors, like flexibility, core strength, and more. Then, sporting clubs sent the names of their nominees for our first national team. N: The technical committee for artistic swimming at the Egyptian Swimming Federation (ESF) usually designs try-outs to choose new members for the national team which consists of nine girls. Nour, how do you choose the line0up for the National Artistic Swimming Team? ![]() The interview is then followed by Anastasiya Chepak, former member of the Ukrainian team and the coach and choreographer for the National Artistic Swimming Team since 2014. We start with Nour El-Afandi, coach and Manager of the team and former Olympian who took part in the London 2012 Games, who recalls the team’s incredible journey to Tokyo. Making progress in the last two decades, they’ve come to represent Egypt in the Olympic Games.Įgyptian Streets spoke to the coaches of the National Artistic Swimming team to learn more about their experience in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Egypt’s Artistic Swimming Team in Tokyo 2020: Promising Future for Stunning SportĪ group of graceful swimmers performs artistic swimming routines in a pool at least three meters deep their moves, synchronized with the music, are fluid, strong and fierce. ![]()
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