“I don’t look at who participates, or how many people. Our success and being here in Japan.” That is the spirit that moves Las Williams, a Catalan artistic swimming team, the synchro of a lifetime, which will participate in the World Masters Championship (for veterans) of Artistic Swimming from the 7th, when they will begin to compete in the city of Kagoshima in the south of the archipelago. His name is obviously a tribute to the great Esther Williams, a pioneer in swimming and actress of golden Hollywood.
There are 12 Williamses, and eight of them have traveled to Japan. They are around 50 and began their adventure about six years ago. In front is Bet Fernández, the captain, who was an elite synchronized swimmer. She is still linked to her sport as a member of the team of former Spanish coach Anna Tarrés, the one from the golden age of synchro in Spain, who advises artistic swimming teams such as Greece, Israel and China. In fact, He was in Fukuoka two weeks ago with the Hellenic team and has returned to Japan again.
This time he does it with former swimmers and with other women who have joined the project at Kallípolis, the club par excellence of the discipline, where they swim every Saturday. The experts are Núria Ayala and Marta Amorós, Olympics in Seoul 88 and Barcelona 92. Her teammates in the national team were Bet Fernández herself and Eli Salrach. The other four that are in Japan have been hooked for about six years. They are Emma Soler, Rita Ayala (Núria’s sister), Noe Soteras and Catalina Bou. In Barcelona they have stayed, another ex of the elite like Eva López, and the ‘amateurs’ Montse Aguilar, Rebeca Reverter and Sarai Roche.
Bet Fernández was shaken by the conflict that caused the stormy departure of Anna Tarrés after the London 2012 Games. “I strayed a lot from synchro,” she recalled in a conversation with this newspaper from Japan. “I looked for other stimuli. And I found them with a couple of friends who were experiencing a personal grieving situation and I wanted to help them. The pool and the synchro were the channel to do it. That’s where the germ of Las Williams broke out. The ex-swimmers and other women without the discipline joined the group, although they did with the aquatic environment, as it is the case of the translator Emma Soler, a scuba diver. “Since then we have laughed, taken care of each other and helped each other, empowered each other with powerful challenges in a very diverse group of people. We feed each other.”
That group grew little by little, week by week, and last year they proclaimed themselves champions of Catalonia in the master category. “Could we do some international competition?”, they wondered. They did not arrive on time to the European in Rome. Well, to Japan, Las Williams decided.
The master category lives outside the channels of the different federations and resources had to be sought to help pay for the trip and stay. “We have had enough of selling flowers and sewing bags and we have managed 3,500 euros from a crowdfunding campaignBetty explains. “Here we are full of enthusiasm and wanting to have a good time”.
From Antònia Font to Abba
On the 7th they will do the technical routine of the team test. “We will do a choreography based on the song Wa yeah!, by Antònia Font. We have been working on it since the beginning of the season”. Three days later, the free routine. “We want to pay homage to Barcelona 92 with music by Freddie Mercury and Los Manolos. We started with it in June and we have it a little greener”. Then the combined routine will arrive. “It’s from last season. We do it with the song Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, from Abba”.
They will, regardless of the result, under the Japanese concept of maemuki, the attitude of always looking ahead. As Núria Ayala herself did, who spent two months in a wheelchair after being run over by a motorcycle last November. Or Bet Fernández herself, who had knee surgery a few months ago. But there they are in Japan, in her favorite setting, in the pool, and as a healthy cocktail that combines health, well-being, sport, friendship, self-esteem and determination.
The ‘sinkro experience’, a more playful offer
The thing about Las Williams and Bet Fernández is not limited to training and competing from time to time. “I invent many things,” says the captain. For example, the ‘sinkro experience’. “We devised it together with Rosa [Junyent], the manager of Kallipolis. And we have already been to Malaga, Barbastro, Bilbao and Eivissa”. It is a competition between teams that has a more playful part, with an exchange and coexistence component, which even comes out of the pool. For example, with a gymkhana proposal, with surfing or paddle surfing activities or a descent down a river.The objective is for the participating teams to live competitive and playful experiences based on the values of the sport.
2023-08-04 06:58:36
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