Pāpāmoa’s Eva Morris will be making her Olympic debut later this week, competing against the world’s best artistic swimmers in the duet event.

“Excitement levels are very high over here,” the 26-year-old says from France.

“It has been a long time coming to get to this point.”

Eva started the sport at age 11 after being inspired by a school project, eventually training up to six hours a day, six days a week as she chased her dreams.

She has represented New Zealand on the world stage for nine years now and has always wanted more, striving for Olympic qualification year after year, missing out on Rio and then Tokyo.

But, after competing at several international competitions from January to June to meet the New Zealand Olympic Committee selection criteria, she has made it to Paris.

This weekend, her clubmates at Tauranga Artistic Swimming will be waking up extra early to watch Eva live out her dream at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

They have put up a sign at the entrance to Baywave to wish her well and let everyone know.

Artistic swimming (formerly known as synchronised swimming) is a combination of swimming, dance and gymnastics. Swimmers perform a synchronised routine in the water accompanied by music.

“We are so ready to soak it up and do the best we can,” Eva says.

“It is a super-stacked field of incredible athletes, so we aren’t looking for any crazy results but are hoping to put forward some good swims and see where that lands us.”

At the Olympic Games, artistic swimming consists of two events: a duet, and a team competition. The duet event consists of a technical routine and a free routine - being swum at 5.30am (NZ time) on Saturday and Sunday.

The routines are scored by judges who take several criteria into account: level of difficulty, synchronisation, execution, and artistic impression.

Pāpāmoa Olympian Eva Morris (left) and her duet partner Nina Brown. Photo: NZME. 

Eva and her duet partner Nina Brown will be just the third artistic swimming duo to represent New Zealand at the Olympic Games, and the first since Beijing in 2008.

“It is such a huge honour to represent team New Zealand at the Olympic Games and not a job I take lightly,” Eva says.

“I am really thankful to be here. There are a few of us from Tauranga competing across different sports.”

Eva is one of several Tauranga Olympians in Paris who trained at the Adams Centre for High Performance in Mount Maunganui.

As she has chased her Olympic dreams, she has also had training stints in Invercargill and Auckland, as well as the Gold Coast in Australia.

She has competed all over the world. This year she had events in Qatar, Malta, Hungary and Canada, and did her pre-Olympics training camp in Grenoble, France.

“It’s addictive. Whenever training is hard or you feel exhausted, it’s normal to feel like wanting to give up, but then you will go to a competition and all of that gets erased and you’re just having a great time,” Eva says.

“I’ve just kept coming back year after year saying, ‘I’ll just do one more world champs and then I’ll retire’, but each time when you’re standing there with your best friends, it makes you want to stay another year.”

Wherever she is in the world, including Paris, home is never far from her thoughts.

Neither are her family and friends, her workmates at Burn Reformer Pilates in Pāpāmoa and her clubmates at Tauranga Artistic Swimming.

“I am so thankful to my family for supporting me throughout my career. I’m really looking forward to looking into the stands and seeing my family and a few friends from New Zealand in the crowd, along with a young swimmer from our club that’s also coming to watch.”

Eva first joined that club at Baywave when she was 11 years old.

She had been inspired by a school project a few years earlier for which she had to choose a New Zealand athlete to follow at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. She chose the synchronised swimming duo, sisters Nina and Lisa Daniels, and soon became obsessed with the sport.

-Te Puke Times