International Swimming Hall of Fame Honorees By Category - Synchronized (Artistic) Swimmer

Miho Takeda was born and raised in the Kyoto Prefecture on Honshu, Japan’s largest and most populous island. She began swimming at the age of five and turned to synchronized swimming two years later. She changed clubs at the age of thirteen to train under Masayo Imura, the national team coach and “Mother of Japanese Synchro.”

Her first sport was figure skating. Then she saw rhythmic gymnastics on TV and she left the ice for the ribbon and mat, but not for long. At the age of six, her mother took her for swim lessons where she was exposed to synchronized swimming. She immediately loved the sport. Early on in her career, she was tested by her coach to see if she was really serious about synchronized swimming. She was asked to give up her favorite foods of chocolate, cakes and chips. She loved the sport more, gave the foods up and the rest, as they say, is history.

She tried gymnastics, dancing and swimming before she joined the synchronized swim-ming team at the age of five. It was at the Seagull Sports School where she learned to love the water and sports, and it became her second home.

She is one of the most decorated synchronized swimmers in history with a combined 19 gold and two silver medals at the Olympic Games, World Championships, World Cups and World Trophies.

A pair of overweight, uncoordinated twins is the way they describe themselves in elementary school. But when they were eight years old they discovered synchronized swimming; they had a natural talent for it and they loved it. It was the perfect sport for identical twins, swimming like mirrored images.

A pair of overweight, uncoordinated twins is the way they describe themselves in elementary school. But when they were eight years old they discovered synchronized swimming; they had a natural talent for it and they loved it. It was the perfect sport for identical twins, swimming like mirrored images.

Ever since Jill learned to swim at the age of four, she loved synchronized swimming and competed in the sport for 20 years. Upon reaching the National Team, she practiced five to seven hours a day, six days per week and became one of the world’s all-time best synchronized swimmers.

Miya Tachibana grew up in Otsu, Shiga, Japan loving the water so much that by the fourth grade, she was competing in synchronized swimming. By high school, she was winning the Junior World Cham­pionships.

Russia’s international breakthrough in synchronized swimming started at the 1993 Junior World Championships in Leeds when Olga Brusnikina won all of the solo, duet and team events. That same year, she was a member of the team that won at the European Championships.

Jill Savery grew up in Concord, California, as an all-around athlete in gymnastics, swimming, diving, baseball and ballet. But, by the age of 10, she decided where to put her energy: synchronized swimming.

What Hall of Fame Olympic Champions Tracy Ruiz, Carolyn Waldo, Candy Costie, Michele Cameron, the Josephson twins, Sylvie Frechette and Kristen Babb were to the United States and Canada, the beautiful Mikako Kotani was to Japan.

The sport of synchronized swimming had been around since the early 20th century when Annette Kellerman and Katherine Curtis were the first performers of the growing sport, but it did not come to the Soviet Union until decades later. When Olga Sedakova was about nine-years-old, she and her twin sister came upon synchronized swimming by pure chance.