In Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées), swimmers from the Artistic Swimming association do not have slots reserved for their training. The city does not provide them. The cause: a conflict between the association and a nautical club, which seems difficult to resolve.
The image is difficult to imagine: around ten young girls, in the middle of synchronized swimming training, in the middle of a pool… full of people. However, these are the current conditions for the swimmers of the Tarbes Artistic Swimming club (NAT). The young association, created 10 months ago, does not have slots reserved for its members in the city’s swimming pools.
A complicated situation, which its members denounce in an Instagram video and a petition, shared on May 3. The association questions: “Injustice? Favoritism? Neglect and disinterest?” How can we explain this state of affairs, when the club has 40 members and 5 coaches?
In 2023, Anne-Laure Guin, then coach and swimmer at EPSTN (Entente Pyrénées Séméac Tarbes Natation) decides to leave the club and create an association focused solely on artistic swimming. “The money from our memberships went to swimming, she says. We wanted to compete, have better equipment and evolve.” With her, she leads all the former EPSTN students. “This is an administrative and legal conflict between the president of EPSTN and Anne-Laure Guin, assures Thomas Da Costa, sports assistant at Tarbes town hall. And the“NAT registered its members, without ensuring that they had slots.”
“We asked for slots but the city refused them to us, says Anne-Laure Guin. They tell us that there are already two nautical associations in Tarbes, and that they are the ones who own the slots. On Saturday, the 5 EPSTN swimmers are alone in half of a large pool, while we are outside. At the NAT we are 5 coaches, while they only have one MNS (lifeguard) paid by the pool.”
“All arbitrations are designed so as not to take away from the public’s slots, says Thoma Da Costa. We proposed a solution: the EPSTN agrees to reinstate the NAT swimmers in its slots, provided that Anne-Laure Guin is not present at the edge of the pool during training.” It was a month ago and since then, the municipal councilor has assured that the NAT has not responded to this request.
For her part, Anne-Laure Guin underlines the fact that the NAT is “the only club specializing in synchronized swimming in the Hautes-Pyrénées. It’s a little-known, poorly regarded sport. Swimming is king and we collect the crumbs.” But for Thomas Da Costa, “to say that artistic swimming is a marginal sport is totally false and defamatory. The petition launched by the NAT is nonsense, it is outrageous. Our door remains open, we want to find a solution following the proposal we made.”
Anne-Laure Duguin recalls that her swimmers recently participated in the Swim Artistic show in Cahors, where they won “the jury’s special favorite prize, even though we are training in very poor conditions.” The club hopes to present a gala in Lourdes soon.
