'Our pic is being used to promote Paris Olympics'

Almost Synchro, a cold open water synchronised swimming group, train up to four times a week

A team of cold water synchronised swimmers, many of them women over 50, is being featured on Paris Metro billboards to advertise this summer's Olympics.

Almost Synchro, who train at Henleaze Lake in Bristol, first got together for a mass synchronised swim to celebrate the lake's centenary in 2019.

Team member Annabel Bennett said: "We didn't even know about the Metro feature until someone mentioned it."

It is part of a celebration of sport ahead of the games, which begin on 26 July.

The photographs by Eva Watkins have won awards

Ms Bennett said: "[Photographer] Eva Watkins took the pictures of us in the early days and she won several awards for them - they pop up every now and again.

"People would go to Paris and come back and tell us about them. Apparently they're really huge."

Photographer Eva Watkins, who has since travelled to the French capital to see her work, said: "I was completely shocked and honoured.

"It's not something I ever thought was going to happen to me."

Ms Watkins took the photos as part of her degree at the University of West England during 2019 and 2020.

She said: "I wanted to work with a community of people that were doing something different."

"The work started creating context behind it as we started shooting. We talked a lot about mental health and physical health," she added.

'Swimming fulfils us'

Ms Bennett said Almost Synchro was formed after 85 swimmers turned up for the swimming lake's centenary celebration in 2019.

"We made the number 100 in the water [and] it was like being 10 again, swimming with your friends in the water and making patterns."

Twenty of them decided to continue as a synchronised swimming group, making up the first outdoor synchro team in the country.

Ms Bennett said they train seriously and laugh endlessly. "It fulfils [us] and ticks a lot of boxes.

"It's great they put a photograph of us up. We are celebrating what sport means to a lot of people.

"We're not professionals, but we take it seriously."

The photos are being used to promote the 2024 Paris Olympics

Ms Bennett said synchronised swimming can give people body confidence is another thing synchronised swimming can give people.

"I can't say I would have chosen to stand in public in my swimming costume but it's very liberating," she said.

"We've declared ourselves - here we are, tall, short, thin, fat. This is us and we stand there in our swimming costumes.

"How liberating is that? Not only for us, but for other people looking at us.

"We're not afraid of who we are, and who we're becoming."

Eva Watkins said she was "shocked and honoured" to see her photographs in Paris

Ms Bennett signed up to the Henleaze Lake centenary celebration synchronised swimming just a few months after having a double mastectomy.

"I was diagnosed through a routine mammogram. I almost didn't go and was blasé even when I was called back.

"They found a huge tumour then another one on the other breast so I had two primaries."

She had a double mastectomy and later went on to have a hysterectomy.

"I know the swimming has really helped my movement and my recovery.

"When you lose a body part - I became very disorientated and dizzy. I couldn't bend forward as my head would spin.

"But now I can dive in the water again and I'm doing forward somersaults.

"I just didn't want to not dive again and gradually I've overcome it in my brain and it's been great."

She said the pressure of the water is quite impactful too and believes it helped a bit of lymphedema - swelling - that she wanted to reduce.

"When you've had radical surgery movement can be an issue but I put my arms up and fling them around all the time [during synchro practice], she added.

"I know it has helped my flexibility and range of movement."

Ms Bennett said that as well as the physical benefits of the swimming, it has been positive to have somewhere to go where she can "lark about with friends and just laugh".