By Sarah Holt

How Sarah got on

England's Lauren Smith offers some consolation

The wave of pain did not hit me until a few hours later.

I had spent the day training with England's synchronised swimming team and I was sunk.

I had asked my body to curve this way and that way and told my lungs to stop breathing for second after second.

This burning ache and exhaustion was how my body convinced me what really I already knew - synchronised swimming is simply not natural, no matter how easy Barry Davies made it sound on the television.

If you can walk then you can be a runner, if you can throw you can play basketball, but synchro requires a combination of skills which go against the human blueprint.

Arriving poolside at the Manchester Aquatics Centre, the sight of a pair of legs twirling up through the centre of the water like a corkscrew brought the sport's extraordinary demands into focus.

DID YOU KNOW? American Esther Williams brought synchronised swimmers to the masses when she starred in Hollywood aqua musicals in the 1940s and 50s

England's leading synchro star, Jenna Randall, effortlessly glided across the pool to the accompanying refrains of Amazing Grace.

It was a dramatic and peculiar spectacle but most confounding of all was the height and speed at which she was able to propel herself out of the water.

Randall and her team-mates, Olivia Allison and Lauren Smith, are able to conjure such aquatic feats because their bodies merge the flexibility of Olga Korbut with the lung capacity of Paula Radcliffe.

As a failed school gymnast and marathon hopeful, the odds were stacked against me before I had even dipped a toe in the water.

Still, I was convinced as a confident swimmer - with a penchant for shallow-end handstands - that I could master a handful of basic positions.

The first lesson was how to stay afloat - a sensible place to start in a 10ft deep diving pool.

Synchronised swimmers tread water using an egg beater kick, where one leg circles clockwise and the other moves anticlockwise.

It sounded simple. It wasn't.

I was so thrown by having to abandon my usual method of staying afloat - doggy paddle kicks - that I was out of breath inside a minute with the effort.

From the pool's edge, England performance director Adele Carsen had made a quick assessment of my prospects.

This ballet leg move looks simple but takes years to master - and I was not allowed to give it a try

With a furrowed brow she had motioned for her England charge Lauren, and my coach, to abandon the lesson and move on. It seemed my synchro career was being primed for a swift and ignominious death.

I was, however, buoyed by my adeptness in the next stage of training, grasping the basic back layout position.

Lauren had shouted encouragement as I lay on my back in the water, pointed my toes and stayed afloat, with only the smallest of wobbles, by sculling with circular hand movements.

A deceptive self-confidence had crept through me and coupled with Lauren's cheer I foolishly forgot my earlier failure and agreed to attempt an easy move.

The oyster is a classic beginner's movement and involves lying in the back layout position, stretching your arms behind your head then arching forward to touch your toes while sinking gracefully below water.

In depth: Our guide to synchronised swimming

It sounded simple - it wasn't.

I heaved myself forward through the water but barely touched my toes before I sank sideways with the elegance of a bag of potatoes.

It turned out the embarrassing, splashing failure was not the worst of it - the choking was.

As I floundered back to the surface, I learned a valuable lesson in why synchronised swimmers must not be scoffed at for wearing "pegs" - or clips - on their noses.

Jenna (left) and Olivia show poise - and nose clips - are essential

They wear them because it stops them returning to the surface and repeatedly hacking up water while gulping in oxygen, as I did.

It stops them thinking about Titanic and the Poseidon Adventure and about the lurking danger in deep water every time they execute a move.

Adele and Lauren had shown, quite rightly, no sympathy for my choking breathlessness.

I was merely told I had curled my toes and not kept them straight and I was sent back from my white-knuckled clasp at the edge of the pool for repeated attempts.

It was only when I emerged from the water gasping and clutching my stomach that I learned seven-year-old synchro beginners will not try the oyster until the end of the first year.

First they will build up their strength in the water, then they will master their floating techniques before they even start learning any of the myriad of movements.

Lauren's warmdown after training was a dizzying spectacle

Lauren and the elite synchronised swimmers train for up to 30 hours a week in the pool - I had lasted barely half an hour.

"It was so hard for you because it is so highly skilled," Carsen explained.

"It takes years and years to get to elite standard.

"If you came up coughing and spluttering and out of breath in a routine then that doesn't look very graceful or artistic."

Synchronised swimming has been haunted by the popular opinion that it is a soft sport for females with sequins and fixed grins since its beginnings in the 1920s.

Even though it was granted full Olympic status in 1984 and draws sell-out crowds, like ice-skating, it has struggled to gain sporting credibility.

But the secret to synchronised swimming is that it is all an illusion.

Elite athletes make it look incredibly easy when it is in fact incredibly hard - and that ability to suspend an audience's belief requires a combination of enormous physical strength and skilful artistry that is rarely found elsewhere in sport.

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