Isidora Letelier has been part of the national artistic swimming team since she was 11 years old. Today, at 22, she has managed to position herself as one of the great athletes of this sport and among her great achievements are the three gold medals she won at the 2017 Pan American Synchronized Swimming Championships held in our country.
Although it is true that the sport in Chile is not so well known, the Chilean team has been working hard to raise the level of competitiveness and thus obtain medals, such as the gold and silver achieved in the South American Championship of the discipline in 2018 by the youth team .
To learn more about this sport, Isidora tells us her story with artistic swimming and the challenges they have for the next Pan American Games in Santiago 2023.
The sport was also known in my family because my mother practiced and my grandmother was a judge, so I started when I was 5 years old at the Spanish Stadium and in 2010 I joined the Chilean team.
It is a sport that needs too many hours of training and therefore it is very difficult to make it compatible with a "regular" life. You have to be very in love with the sport so that you can be very professional, because if you train three hours a day it doesn't work, it has to be at least 8 hours. Artistic swimming requires flexibility, strength, technique, and endurance. It is a complex sport but if you have clear objectives, you can do it.
The sport in Chile is not so well known only because there is a lack of pools complying with regulations (25 meters wide x 25 meters long with a depth of 2.30 meters), so if there are no pools, there is no sport. In the Metropolitan Region there are clubs such as the Spanish and Italian Stadiums that have swimming pools.
To get motivated. Having the mental and physical strength very structured to be able to say I am going to train eight hours a day, including Saturdays for this competition and probably in the competition we will be third place. Being motivated is the most difficult and at the same time the most important thing. In general, those who have already retired, leave because they have to combine eight hours of training with studies and / or work.
The achievement that we achieved in the last Pan American Games, where we rose two places in duets (from 9th to 7th) since the previous edition. Another achievement was the second place in teams that we had in the South American Games in Cochabamba 2018. Those have been good achievements, because it shows that we have been improving our level.
Santiago 2023 is a huge opportunity to represent the country and moreover at home. The Chilean team is young, the majority are between 15-16 years old, but it is a team that promises a lot and is very strong.
