We are lucky enough to have the opportunity to be the last stop on the Goldfish Blog Tour! If you've been following the Tour the whole time, I hope you enjoyed it! If you are new to the Tour and/or to Goldfish, you can check out a synopsis of the book at the end of the post. But for now, let's talk about...
Synchronized swimming
I realized that I didn't know much about the sport and wanted to learn more, so I consulted the Olympics website for more information. There I found out that at the turn of the 20th century, Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman toured the U.S. performing water acrobatics. Then, another lady named Katherine Curtis had the idea of putting the water acrobatics to music. Her students performed at the 1933-34 Chicago "Century of Progress" fair, and their routine was called....wait for it...synchronized swimming. But it wasn't until 1984 that it became an Olympic sport for the first time. And fun fact: rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming are the only exclusively female Olympic sports. (I got all that info here: https://www.olympic.org/synchronized-swimming.)If you want to follow along with synchronized swimming in Rio, you can do so here: https://www.rio2016.com/en/synchronised-swimming and here: http://www.nbcolympics.com/synchronized-swimming.
Finally, I wasn't able to embed this, but here's Russia's 2004 Olympic Gold win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDi8J4g-pUk.
Enjoy!
Lou Brown is one of the fastest swimmers in the county. She’s not boasting, she really is. So things are looking pretty rosy the day of the Olympic time-trials. With her best mate Hannah by her side, Lou lines up by the edge of the pool, snaps her goggles on and bends into her dive…
Everything rests on this race. It’s Lou’s thing.
… or it was. She comes dead last and to top it all off Hannah sails through leaving a totally broken Lou behind.
Starting again is never easy, particularly when you’re the odd-one out in a family of insanely beautiful people and a school full of social groups way too intimidating to join. Where do you go from here? Finding a new thing turns out to be the biggest challenge Lou’s ever faced and opens up a whole new world of underwater somersaults, crazy talent shows, bitchy girls and a great big load of awkward boy chat.
Lou Brown guides us through the utter humiliation of failure with honesty, sass and a keen sense of the ridiculous. This girl will not be beaten.
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