Las Vegas swimmer savors long-denied opportunity
It’s a steamy Friday afternoon on the deck of the Las Vegas Municipal Pool on East Bonanza Road. And, in the pool, Bill May and Christina Jones are doing what they can to kick up the mercury into “sweltering” territory.
Mimicking each other’s movements precisely, they slice across the pool with a series of quick, almost violent movements and end the water-frothing five-second dash with a silent, almost eerie corkscrew into the water that continues until their legs and feet disappear from view.
Then, they resurface, catch their breath and listen as their coach, Chris Carver, offers comments and corrections through speakers — the same ones that pump out the aural background they’ve been swimming to — and hand gestures that could also be a third base coach’s signal to swing for the fences.
Then May and Jones do it again. And again. And yet again, working for the mirror-image perfection they’ll need to bring home the gold next month as the United States’ representatives in the first-ever mixed duet synchronized swimming event at the FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia.
May and Jones, along with fellow mixed duet swimmer Kristina Lum Underwood, plan to leave Las Vegas for Russia on July 20. May and Jones will swim in the technical program of the mixed duet event on July 25 and 26, while May and Lum Underwood will swim in the mixed duet free program on July 28 and 30.
That he is competing will be groundbreaking both for May and for his sport. The competition will mark the first time that FINA, the international governing authority for aquatic sports, is sanctioning a world championship mixed duet event in which man-and-woman teams will compete in synchronized swimming
Both Jones and Lum Underwood are former Olympians — Jones competed in the 2008 games and Lum Underwood in the 2000 games — and Lum Underwood and May have partnered to win four national and several international duet titles.
However, despite having won numerous titles throughout an impressive career and being inducted into the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Hall of Fame in 2012, May has been barred from competing for his sport’s most high-profile honors — a FINA World Championship title and an Olympic medal — simply because of his gender.
May, 36, is an enthusiastic, low-key guy who says he holds no grudge. But he also acknowledges that finally being able to compete for a world championship title is something he’s been waiting to do for a long time.
“It’s actually something I didn’t think was ever going to happen during my swimming career,” he says.
The career began when May was 10. He lived in New York then and joined a synchronized swimming team with his sister.
“She wanted to try it out,” he says, “so I did it with her.”
It turned that May was pretty good. When he was 16, he and his family moved to California, where May began training with the Santa Clara Aquamaids
“Santa Clara was the world championship team,” May says. “They had the best team in the world, the best coaching, the most opportunities. They really helped my career take off.”
But May knew from the start that, no matter how good he might become, his competitive options would be limited.
May’s list of career achievements includes winning 14 U.S. national championships and several international titles, winning a silver medal with Lum Underwood at the 1998 Goodwill Games, and twice being named U.S.A. Synchronized Swimming Athlete of the Year. Although he was eligible to compete in the U.S. nationals and open events not governed by FINA, he was ineligible to compete in the Olympics and FINA World Championships.
Nevertheless, May says, the Santa Clara team gave him the same opportunities as his teammates.
“They treated me not like a male swimmer, but as a synchronized swimmer who was a male.
“I enjoyed it. I really liked it. I had a goal: I wanted to be the best synchronized swimmer I could be, and they supported me and they helped me reach that goal.”
Even if, May says,“I knew very well that I wouldn’t go to the Olympics.”
While he was swimming for Santa Clara, May met Lum Underwood and Jones. Lum Underwood recalls that May’s teammates found the gender-based barrier he faced “heartbreaking, because he dedicated his life to the sport and he was amazing.”
Lum Underwood — who first partnered with May in 1998 — recalls that May “sort of had to stay back” while his female teammates trained for the Olympics.
“He was there every day at the pool, helping us and training us, because he couldn’t go,” she says.
After retiring from competitive swimming, May, Jones and Lum Underwood all came to Las Vegas to perform in shows on the Strip. Lum Underwood — who also has been inducted into the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Hall of Fame — has been in “Le Reve” at Wynn Las Vegas for just more than nine years. Jones has been a member of the synchronized swimming troupe in Cirque du Soleil’s “O” at Bellagio since 2009. And May has been performing in “O” for about 10 years.
All had assumed that their competitive swimming days were over. Then came word last summer that FINA was considering a historic change for the 2015 world championships.
“We knew there was a vote being done by FINA on whether or not (mixed duet) should make its debut in the world championship in July, but we didn’t really know how fast it would happen,” Jones says. “We found out they were going to vote on it, and two months later we just started training.”
The athletes have been training for the inaugural mixed duet event since November. Among the challenges they face is adapting to the evolution — in choreography, style and music, for example — the sport has experienced over the past several years.
“I think synchronized swimming has changed,” May says. “So we want to be able to keep up with the pace of synchronized swimming throughout the world.”
The athletes also have to balance the mental and physical demands of performing, which require them to display a consistent level of artistic athleticism several times a week over a long period of time, to the peak-and-give-it-all nature of world-class competition.
“(In a show), we do the same thing every night, and it’s definitely more performance-themed,” explains May, who performs a solo character role in “O” and who is again adjusting to the nuances of swimming with a partner.
Meanwhile, Jones and Lum Underwood are adapting to the different dynamic that they say is inherent in swimming with a male duet partner. For example, Jones says, May is “really powerful, so I’m working on being as powerful as he is.”
Similarly, Lum Underwood says, “Bill is 6 inches taller than I am. So if we want to look similar (in height), it might mean I have to get higher out of the water during certain movements. It’s really just trying to find a balance between the two of you.”
However, mixed duet also can incorporate new, dramatic moves into a synchronized swimming routine.
“He can lift us out of the water higher than another girl could, for example,” Jones says. “And he’s so acrobatic. He can do so many things, great things, that I feel there are no limits, really.”
A more practical challenge of returning to world-level competition is balancing the demands of training with family and job.
“There aren’t a lot of hours that I’m not either in the show or in the pool,” May says. “It’s difficult to juggle home life, the little things you take for granted, like doing your laundry or changing your oil.”
Or, even, raising a child. Lum Underwood gave birth to a daughter in January and also has a 2-year-old son at home. Most of the teams they’ll face next month probably are “in the pool six to eight hours a day, and we don’t have that luxury here,” she says.
And, of course, there are the physical strains of training. There are nights, May admits, “when my arms will be dead. But I just think, ‘This is what I wanted to do. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.’ ”
Training is “hard on your body and your mind,” Jones says. “But it’s familiar to us. It’s something we’ve always done. And we have our wonderful coach, Chris Carver, all the way from (Santa Clara) California, whom we’ve worked with for years. So it’s kind of like riding a bike again, going back to what we grew up doing, back to our roots.”
That FINA is allowing male athletes to compete in a world championship might even help to change the perception of synchronized swimming as a women’s-only sport. May says he never allowed others’ misconceptions to bother him.
“I think that’s because of my disposition,” he says. “I feel like I’m pretty laid back in the sense that I never really thought about that much, because (swimming) was something I enjoyed doing so much.”
Still, he says, adding mixed duet to the world championships might allow fans to relate to the sport more, as they do with dance or ice skating.
“The way a man moves and a woman moves are very different, and to find that beauty between them I think is challenging in itself. I also think it will be something that’s very athletic and very beautiful.”
Whatever happens, Jones and Lum Underwood are excited not just to compete again but to help May experience something he long has deserved but long has been denied.
Jones recalls May as being never outwardly upset about being barred from Olympic competition because of his gender.
“He was just genuinely happy for all of us to experience that,” Jones says. “He’s the most selfless person, and just being able to be there while he achieves his dream and being part of changing history in our sport came out of nowhere, but it’s a very pleasant surprise.”
For May, too.
“Who knows what will happen,” he says. “But it’s almost like I picked up where I left off, and now I’m continuing that journey to the Olympics and world championship.”
Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280 or follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.
