The new scoring system has already been in use at the World Championships since 2023 in Fukuoka but will debut at the Olympics for the first time ever. It’s already making a significant difference to results: At the Doha 2024 World Championships, three acrobatic routine medallists (China, Ukraine and the USA) did not receive a base mark. Mexico, who were third in the preliminary round, received two base marks and finished 10th.

Artistic swimming followed the lead of figure skating, which overhauled its scoring system after a judging scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. Much like figure skating, the new, more mathematically-based scoring includes required elements with degrees of difficulty. A separate panel of judges scores on artistic impression, such as choreography and musicality.

"It is very, very, very far from the feathered caps of Hollywood cinema. It is now on par with, let's call it gymnastics or figure skating in the water,” Adam Andrasko, the CEO of USA Artistic Swimming, told Reuters.

In the new artistic swimming scoring system coaches are required to give the panel of judges a difficulty card (coach card) detailing the routine, all the elements to be performed in the water and their order of execution. Each of these elements has a degree of mathematical difficulty, so the coach card details what is known as the declared difficulty (‘DD'). The technical controllers evaluate whether swimmers accurately reflect during their routine what has been declared in the coach card.

If an element in the coach card is not performed in the water, includes an error or has a lower difficulty than that which was stated, the element will not receive the points that correspond to the DD but rather a score multiplied by a "base mark”. This new scoring system aims to avoid subjectivity when scoring artistic swimming routines since the system of judging is more standardised.

"Our team have been very instrumental in really elevating and challenging the system to make sure the sport was exciting and entertaining. So, what you're going to see now looks absolutely nothing like what you saw at the last Olympic Games. It is dramatically faster. It's dramatically higher flying. There's so much more creativity in routines,” said Andrasko.

The absence of the sport’s dominating team has also opened up the podium for a new champ. Russia have taken gold in both the team and duet events at each of the last six Olympics, an astonishing streak that stretches back to the 2000 Sydney Games but ends in France as Russia and Belarus are not admitted following the invasion of Ukraine.

China are the team to beat after topping the medals table at this year's World Aquatics Championships, with the United States finishing second and Australia third.

"We're going to put performances and scores up that could compete (for gold) if we swim very well," Andrasko said of the Americans' chances. "The Chinese are the best in the world, so it might even be a scenario where they have a bobble in their routine and that is sport to its purest."