Artistic swimmer Bill May flew out to Fukuoka, Japan, 22 years ago this month to watch the World Aquatics Championships, a competition he could not take part in because he was a man.
May recalls almost nothing about the city. Yet he remembers every inch of the pool, which he was allowed to dip into alongside the swimmers competing at the championships, despite only being an onlooker.
“Back then, security wasn’t as tight,” May says with his ready laugh.
Much has changed in artistic swimming and the life of Bill May in 22 years, but fate has brought him back to Fukuoka, which is once again hosting the World Aquatics Championships during the next two weeks. This time, men are allowed to compete in artistic swimming, and 44-year-old May is right in the thick of itas one of the star attractions of the team events.
It turned out to be a successful return trip for May, as he was a part of the silver-medal winning American team in the acrobatic routine.
Things were different when May took up the sport at age 10. He was a boy in a girl’s domain, not openly discouraged but not exactly encouraged either, even as he moved from upstate New York to California to pursue the sport that he eventually becamethe best in the nation at.
“But you won’t be able to go to the Olympics” was a refrain he heard often in those years, as though the Games were the only event that mattered.
He continued anyway, and in artistic swimming found his life’s work. If the world championships and Olympics were women only, so be it. May made his peace with that and reveled in the competitions he could participate in, always showing up, always giving 100 percent, and more often than not winning the title.
He and duet partner Kristina Lum were the best in the U.S. in 1998, earned silver at the Goodwill Games the same year and shared a slew of international first place results. But the road to the Olympics remained closed off to May. Lum competed in the women’s team event at Sydney 2000. May then went to Athens four years later to watch the Games in person.
Finally, at 25, May decided to move on.
A performer to the core, May eventually drifted toward the circus. After Athens, he moved to perform with Cirque du Soleil in its water-based production “O”. It was still doing what he loved most, just in a different venue, and May floated along happily for a decade. Then, on November 29, 2014, he received a life-changing phone call just as he was finishing a show.
Men would be allowed to compete in artistic swimming at the 2015 world championships, he was told. May didn’t need any time to contemplate the implications. He dropped the phone and ran into the hallway, where he met his duet partner Christina Jones, and melted into tears.
“Not even a doubt, a blink of the eye,” he says when asked if he hesitated to recommit to competition. “It was, boom. We’re going back, we’re training. We started training right away.”
With Jones as his partner in the mixed duet technical routine and Lum, now a mom of two, pairing with him in the mixed duet free, May made a triumphant debut at the world championships, winning gold in the technical and silver in the free. He was back in 2017, where he took two bronzes. He took part in 2019 and a pandemic-modified virtual event in 2021.
Against the odds, he had done it all — well, almost. Just before Christmas last year came another bit of news: men would be allowed to compete in artistic swimming at the Olympic Games Paris 2024. That was something May had advocated tirelessly for as a member of the World Aquatics athletes committee. What May had once deemed “the impossible dream” was going to come true. The last closed doors had been thrown open.
After worlds, the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, this fall will serve as the first Olympic qualifier.
The possibilities for May, once so restricted, now seem endless. In some ways, that’s a reward for his years of work.
“It’s a statement,” he says of his and other men’s participation at the world championships and the Olympics. “It’s a statement saying our sport is moving into the whole inclusive future of all sports. And I think you’re seeing a different look of the sport that does include men and women. It’s not ‘men are better’ or ‘women are better’. They’re complementing each other to create this really strong, athletic sport that’s inclusive to all genders.”
