May fell in love with artistic swimming, then he changed it

Please don't be one of those last remaining 20th-century relics who think artistic swimming is too pretty to be a sport, too full of hair gel and nose clips and grins to be considered serious, too much a triumph of the aesthetic over the athletic.

- Rohit Brijnath

Please, instead, go and watch them hold their breath for endless seconds underwater while completing intricate manoeuvres which seamlessly knit together timing, agility, precision and then just quietly gasp.

Or wait, just go and speak to Bill May – a fast-talking, smile-wearing revolutionary with a scar on his forehead from the time his duet partner fell on his head – who will very politely put you straight.

"It's a combination of sports," he says. "You have to have the breath control of a marathon runner, the acrobatics of a gymnast, the speed of a swimmer, the agility of a water polo player. (And) you have to make it look effortless like a dancer."

May, now 46 and an early advocate for men to be allowed to compete in artistic swimming, makes you contemplate one of the most profound questions in sport: Who decides who can play what?

Consider the marathon. Women couldn't run it because chauvinists determined they were too fragile and their uterus might fall out. So the men ran it at the 1896 Olympics, the women only in 1984. Now they're only nine minutes slower than the fastest man.