Bristol swimmers feature in Paris Olympic promotional photos

A team of cold-water synchronized swimmers, many of them women over 50, is featured on billboards in the Paris Metro to advertise this summer’s Olympics.

Team member Annabel Bennett said: “I didn’t even know about the Metro feature until someone mentioned it.”

It’s part of a celebration of sport ahead of the games, which start on July 26.

Mrs Bennett said: “(Photographer) Eva Watkins photographed us in the early days and won several awards for them – they come up from time to time.

“People would go to Paris and come back and tell us about them. Apparently they’re really huge.”

Photographer Eva Watkins, who has since traveled to the French capital to see his work, said: “I was completely shocked and honoured.

“It’s not something I ever thought would happen to me.”

Ms Watkins took the photographs as part of her degree at the University of West England in 2019 and 2020.

She said: “I wanted to work with a community of people who were doing something different.”

“The work started to create context behind it as we started filming. We talked a lot about mental health and physical health,” she added.

Ms Bennett said Almost Synchro was formed after 85 swimmers turned up to celebrate the swimming lake’s centenary in 2019.

“I did the 100 in the water (and) it was like being 10 again, swimming with your friends in the water and doing patterns.”

Twenty of them decided to continue as a synchronized swimming group, forming the first outdoor synchronization team in the country.

Ms Bennett said they train hard and laugh endlessly. “It fulfills (us) and ticks a lot of boxes.

“It’s great that they put up a photo with us. We celebrate what sport means to so many people.

“We’re not professionals, but we take it seriously.”

Ms Bennett said synchronized swimming can give people body confidence is another thing synchronized swimming can give people.

“I can’t say I would have chosen to stand in public in my bathing suit, but it’s very liberating,” she said.

“We declared ourselves – here we are, tall, short, thin, fat. It’s us and we’re standing there in our bathing suits.

“How liberating is that? Not only for us, but also for other people who look at us.

“We are not afraid of who we are and who we are becoming.”

Ms Bennett signed up for the Henleaze Lake synchronized swimming centenary just months after undergoing a double mastectomy.

“I was diagnosed through a routine mammogram. I almost didn’t go and was blasé even when I was called back.

“They found a huge lump, then another one on the other breast, so I had two primary ones.”

She had a double mastectomy and later had a hysterectomy.

“I know swimming has really helped my movement and recovery.

“When you lose a body part – I became very disoriented and dizzy. I couldn’t lean forward because my head would spin.

“But now I can dive back into the water and do somersaults forward.

“I didn’t want to not dive again and gradually I got over it in my brain and it was great.”

She said the water pressure has quite an impact as well, and she thinks it helped a bit of the lymphedema – swelling – that she wanted to reduce.

“When you’ve had radical surgery, movement can be a problem, but I raise my arms and throw them all the time (during timing practice), she added.

“I know it’s helped my flexibility and range of motion.”

Ms Bennett said that as well as the physical benefits of swimming, it was positive to have somewhere to go where she could “hang out with friends and have a laugh”.