The athletes of artistic swimming have their hair perfectly styled, still, and neat when they compete. It looks glued to their heads: and it really is.
Linda Cerruti and Lucrezia Ruggiero, World Aquatics Championships 2024
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We are deep into the Paris 2024 Olympics. Italy is making its mark: the Olympic medal tally currently boasts 7 golds, in addition to 10 silvers and 5 bronzes. Great things are also expected from the team of artistic swimming, the sport of choreography and aquatic acrobatics. The competitions will take place at the Paris Aquatics Centre from August 5 to 10. It starts with the technical routine (disco dance theme): the Italian athletes Linda Cerruti, Marta Iacoacci, Sofia Mastroianni, Lucrezia Ruggiero, Isotta Sportelli, Giulia Vernice, and Francesca Zunino will take to the water, led by Enrica Piccoli. It’s her second Olympics, following a fifth-place finish with the team in Tokyo 2021; for Linda Cerruti, it’s her third, after Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021. For all the others, Paris 2024 marks their debut. But how do athletes of synchronised swimming always maintain impeccable hairstyles in the pool, with hair styled in a bun that never gets wet?
European Championships Rome 2022: silver medal for Italy in team free synchronized swimming
The secret of artistic swimming athletes
The athletes undergo a meticulous and somewhat painful ritual to be able to enter the pool and compete without the water ruining their hair and moving it onto their face. It takes a lot of patience to achieve the result: the hair must appear neat, perfectly adhered to the head, as if glued. This effect is due to a generous amount of a specific product that is applied to the hair: it creates a sort of hard and rigid protective cap, a shell that then needs to be removed piece by piece with the help of a brush, detaching the various parts. This protective layer is essential for performing. The substance used is not just gel: it is gelatin or fish glue mixed with hot water. Moreover, these “glued” hairs lend themselves very well to ASMR videos, a viral type on social media. Daniella Ramirez, an athlete from the US Artistic Swimming team, has made several of these on TikTok, documenting her pre-competition routine.