The jungle drums beat as Australia’s synchronized swimming team, made up of dentistry, architecture, teaching, engineering and paramedical students, launched their Olympic campaign in Paris.

The eight-member team, which performed to Hans Zimmer’s “Volcano”, had a difficult task to overcome on Monday in the technical team competition at the Paris Aquatic Centre against host country France.

With a jungle theme with drum beats and accents, they achieved 235.9071 points and were in last place of the ten teams after the first of three exercises.

The freestyle follows on Tuesday, and the medals are awarded after the acrobatic exercises on Wednesday.

With long-time top team Russia not participating in the Olympics following the invasion of Ukraine, the start of synchronized swimming came with a rare dose of unpredictability.

China led after the technical team exercise with 313.5538 points, followed by Spain (287.1475), Italy (277.8304) and France (277.7925).

Australia achieved its highest score to date in the women’s technical team competition at the World Championships in Doha in February, finishing eighth.

But they fell short of the pace in front of a roaring, partisan crowd in the packed arena.

Russia had won all 12 possible gold medals in the sport formerly known as synchronized swimming since the 2000 Games in Sydney.

But the country has been largely shunned from the international sporting scene since the start of its war against Ukraine and has not entered a synchronized swimming team in a major competition since the Tokyo Olympics.

At these Games, men were allowed to participate in the team competition for the first time, but none of the ten teams selected a male swimmer.

In Paris, a new evaluation system for the Games will be introduced for the first time, in which execution and artistic impression will be judged separately on a difficulty scale set by each country.

With AP