Four-time world gold medalist Giorgio Minisini has announced his retirement after not being selected among the 96 athletes to compete in synchronized swimming in Paris in 2024.
advertisementDespite the Paris 2024 Olympics vowing to be the first ever Games with equal participation between men and women, there will be no male competitors in Olympic synchronized swimming.
All 96 athletes selected from 18 countries to compete in the Olympics were women.
In 2022, the World Aquatics Federation changed its rules to allow up to two male athletes to be selected for an eight-athlete synchronized swimming team.
“World Aquatics is extremely disappointed that no male artistic swimmer has been selected for Paris 2024,” it said in a statement to Euronews.
“This should have been a landmark moment for the sport. We knew it was always going to be a challenge for the men to get into the team for Paris 2024, but given that their qualification was set 18 months ago, we were still hopeful that some would make it.”
There is no room for the World Aquatics Federation or the International Olympic Committee to intervene in athlete selection, as it is always up to each national federation to decide.
With no athlete set to compete at the Paris Olympics, four-time world gold medallist Giorgio Minisini has announced that he will compete for the last time at the age of 28.
“Obsession is a young man’s game,” Minisini, who was left off the Italian Olympic team in April, wrote on his Instagram account on Tuesday.
America’s Minnisini and Bill May were the two Olympians most likely to qualify for the Paris Olympics as the first male athletes to compete in artistic swimming.
The sport made its debut as synchronized swimming at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Minisini specializes in the mixed duet event, which is not yet an Olympic sport, and has not been selected for the team event.
May was on the U.S. team that won silver and bronze in team acrobatics routines at the last two world championships. At age 45, he missed out on making the Olympic team last month.
“All of us in the artistic swimming community must work harder to provide opportunities for male athletes in this sport,” said World Aquatics, which hopes to add a mixed duet event to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Women’s Olympic participation more than doubles in 40 years
In March, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that it would set a 50/50 split for men and women competing in the Olympics.
“We are celebrating one of the most important moments in women’s history and in sport in general at the Olympic Games,” said IOC President Thomas Bach.
Women’s participation in the Olympic Games has more than doubled over the past 40 years, from 22.9% at the 1984 Los Angeles Games to 50% at the 2024 Paris Games.
The IOC has announced that 28 of the 32 sports at this year’s Summer Olympics will be fully gender-equal.
There will also be “more gender-balanced medal events, with 152 women’s events, 157 men’s events and 20 mixed events.”
