Name: Artistic swimming ⏲️ 6 Minute English
Uploaded: 2026-02-13T17:10:45.000Z
Duration: 6 min 15 s
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Six Minute English from BBCLearningEnglish.com hello, this is Six Minute English from BBC Learning English.

Have you ever done something physically challenging, Phil?

Like running a marathon, maybe, or climbing a mountain?

I've climbed some mountains, but only very little ones, so it wasn't that challenging.

If physical challenges are something you enjoy, maybe you should try artistic swimming or synchronized swimming, as it used to be called.

A combination of dance and gymnastics with a difference.

In artistic swimming, athletes dance underwater while holding their breath.

Swimmers dance upside down in the water holding their breath.

As we'll hear, it's an extremely demanding sport which requires discipline, stamina and years of training.

As usual, we'll be learning some useful new words and phrases, and

you can practice these with the quiz and worksheet on our website.

But first, Phil, I have a question for you.

Artistic swimming became an olympic sport in 1984, but

which country has won the most gold medals since then?

Is it A, Russia, B, China, or C, the usa?

Well, we'll reveal the correct answer later in this episode.

Sylvia Solomoshyova from Slovakia is a European championship medalist.

She's also the first artistic swimmer with over a million social media followers after videos of her walking upside down underwater went viral.

Here she explains the different types of swimming dances called routines to Dashyane Navagayam, presenter of BBC World Service program the Conversation.

If you had to explain artistic swimming to someone who has never seen it, how would you describe it?

So I would say it depends if you're watching, like a solo or duet or team routine, because in solo there's one person, in duet there's two people, and

in team routines there can be eight people or 10 people.

And in the team routines, there's a lot of lifts.

And actually in the routines, we are smiling, but

we are hiding behind a smile because we are actually maybe dying.

We don't have oxygen, but we are smiling.

And people think that it's easy when it's actually not.

Artistic swimming routines are performed solo, meaning by just one person or as a duet, which means by two people.

There are also team routines where one swimmer is lifted up out of the water.

What all these routines have in common is that physically they are incredibly hard.

Yes, artistic routines are done upside down underwater without oxygen.

The swimmer's movements need to be as graceful as a ballet dancer.

And above all, it has to look Effortless because judges award points for artistic expression.

Sylvia says she hides behind a smile an idiom meaning to hide pain by presenting a happy outward appearance.

To succeed at the top level of any sport requires a huge amount of dedication.

Sylvia trains eight hours a day, six days a week under the guidance of her coach, who's also her mum and a former artistic swimming champion herself.

Here, Sylvia discusses the sacrifices she's made to succeed with Datiani Navarnaygam, the for BBC World Services.

How easy was it being trained and coached by your mum?

I think it's good on one side because you can practice more at home, but

on the other hand, it's not sometimes good because you're training.

When you're at home, when you're supposed to be, like, chilling, there's no respite from it.

In a way, I guess, yeah, I didn't have time for anything else.

Sylvia thinks there are good and bad things about being coached by her mum.

It's good because she can practice at home, but

on the other hand, it feels like she's training all the time.

She uses the phrase on the other hand to show this contrasting opinion.

What Sylvia really looks forward to is chilling, a slang word meaning relaxing, or hanging out.

For young athletes, balancing sport with school and friends is difficult and it's hard to get a respite from training.

A respite is a temporary break from doing something difficult.

I think I need a respite from all this talk about training.

Now, what was the answer to your question?

Ah, yes, Phil, I asked you which country had won the most gold medals for artistic swimming since the beginning of the Olympic sport, And

Ok, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with solo, something done alone, and

The idiom hide behind a smile means to hide painful feelings by presenting a happy external appearance.

The phrase, on the other hand, is used to introduce a contrasting opinion or statement.

And finally, a respite is a break from doing something difficult.

But if you'd like to practice the vocabulary you've learnt from this or any of our other episodes, then head over to our website, bbclearningenglish.com for quizzes, pronunciation tips and much more.

Thanks for joining us and goodbye for now.

6 Minute English from BBCLearningEnglish.