07/01/96 - 12:38 PM ET - Click reload often for latest version
Swimmers push off the walls of the pool every 50 meters of their race, and water polo players shove, hold and lean on each other as they jockey for position during their matches.
But synchronized swimmers are alone - just them and the water during their technical and free routines. If they touch the pool's bottom, which must be a minimum of 9 feet deep, they're penalized two points.
But co-coach Gail Emery says she sometimes thinks she's coaching a contact sport when she watches practice, especially early in the season when the eight-woman team hasn't quite perfected its spacing.
''You've got 16 kneecaps and 80 toes spinning around in all directions, and there are a lot of bumps,'' she says. ''Not too long ago, we had to haul Tammy (Cleland) off for X-rays when her foot banged into a shin in front of her.''
Timing is the most difficult thing, says Heather Pease, because the swimmers must be in sync with the music and with each other.
''We're forming patterns and moving together, so we all have to be doing exactly the same thing at the same time,'' Pease says. ''Pretty much we all even have to breathe together.''
O, say can you see: Nathalie Schneyder, 28, and Margo Thien, 24, are featured in LIFE magazine's July issue, swimming upside down in front of a U.S. flag. They are among 17 athletes, along with more famous Olympians Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who posed in the nude for the magazine's study of the muscles of Olympic athletes. Schneyder has another flag connection. Her 1988 Baretta is painted to resemble a rolling U.S. flag. The car's odometer is pushing 150,000 miles, but the paint job is new. Teammates helped her paint a blue star field on the hood and red and white stripes down the sides shortly after the team was picked last fall.
Family ties: Identical twins Karen and Sarah Josephson were synchro's most famous sisters. They won the gold medal in the duet competition at Barcelona, Spain, beating another set of twins, Canada's Penny and Vicky Vilagos. This year's team has a pair of sisters, though not twins, too: Becky Dyroen-Lancer and Suzannah Bianco. . . . Heather Simmons-Carrasco missed a week of practice in May. Her problem wasn't an injury; it was chicken pox. She wasn't very ill but was quarantined because her partner, Cleland, had never had the disease. Says Simmons-Carrasco: ''I caught it from my nephew Jimmy. He's 3. And no one in my family could remember whether I'd had it or not.''
By Karen Allen, USA Today