Format
Each team had ten members.
The team competition included two events, the technical routine program and the free routine program. The compulsory figures event, which was part of the Olympic Games since 1984 was dropped.
The technical routine required entries to perform a series of required elements in prescribed order. It had a time limit of two minutes and 50 seconds. Music selection and limited choreography was up to the discretion of each team.
In the free routine, there were no specifications for the routine other than the five-minute time limit.
In both the technical and free routines, a panel of 10 judges (five giving scores for technical merit and five awarding scores for artistic impression) awarded points from 0 to 10 in one tenth point increments.
Once the technical merit and artistic impression scores were calculated for a total score, the technical routine score was weighted to 35 percent and the free routine to 65 percent. These two scores were then added together to determine overall medal placement.
Read more about this topic: Synchronized Swimming At The 1996 Summer Olympics