The only set of Artistic Swimming medals up for grabs on Day 5 of the World Aquatics Championships - Fukuoka 2023 was claimed by Spain in the Technical Team event. After a preliminary round that included a flawless Chinese performance and base marks for most other competitors, the final was expected to be exciting with nine countries in contention for a spot on the podium.
During the preliminary round, the Spaniards received two base marks, but they successfully executed the 38.85 declared difficulty for their “Ole Fukuoka!” routine, choreographed to a unique combination of Spanish flamenco and Japanese music, to collect the gold medal. As predicted, the event was a closely contested and full of suspense until the end, but the Spaniards’ final score of 281.6893 points was enough to top the podium.
Meritxell Mas Pujadas said: “We are super proud of the work we have done. Not only this year but everything that comes after. The championships are not over yet, but we are still very happy with today's result. Without the people around us, who support us every day, and give us all their energy, what we do would not be possible.”
Both the silver medal winners, Team Italy, and bronze medal winners, Team USA were also able to execute their declared difficulties. The difference between second and third place was less than 0.8 points and was determined by artistic impression and by synchronization errors. The Italians, who swam their routine appropriately themed “Fire”, to the song “No Twerk” by Apashe were awarded 274.5155 points. Following their swim, Enrica Piccoli reflected “Yesterday was such a hard day because we finished twelfth. It wasn’t so good, so we were a little bit sad, but we didn’t give up. Today we swam with such different emotion and strength.”
The Americans, already more successful than in recent World Championships, were fourth after the preliminary round with one base mark. The team performed a popular and well-known routine “Smooth Criminal”, swum to music by Michael Jackson, with an impressively high difficulty score of 39.20. The Americans were able to execute it flawlessly and scored 273.7396 points to claim USA’s third medal in Fukuoka.
Riding high on their success as a team, USA’s Anita Alvarez said “I think it definitely felt better than the time before. We had a base mark in the prelims, so we were really going for a base mark free performance and to just enjoy the performance as much as we could. We feel amazing. Just super excited. It's now our second team medal that we've come home with in the past few days and we came into the final in fourth place, so to come out in third and get a medal - we’re just so excited.”
Alvarez continued: “There's so much new stress with the new system and doing everything perfect. So we really just wanted to be able to enjoy our performance. Also, we have really creative choreography and fun choreography to swim, so we're trying to embrace that and really swim just from our hearts. Thank you to everyone who supported us along the way. It takes a village - it's not just us and our coaches. There are so many people behind us. People who do the tiniest little things that are all helping our journey and to get this medal. So thank you everyone and keep rooting for us.”
Women Duet Free Preliminaries
With only 0.3 points separating the first two ranked duos, Austrian triplet sisters Anna-Maria and Eirini Alexandri, and Ukrainian twin sisters Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva, the final round of the Free Duet competition is set to be very exciting. Other duos to watch in the top 12 qualifiers are the medalists from the Technical Duet event, World Champions from Japan Moe Higa, and Mashiro Yasunaga, Italian silver medalists Lucrezia Ruggiero and Linda Cerruti, and bronze medalist Spaniards Iris Tio Casa and Alisa Ozhogina Ozhogin. However, USA’s Megumi Field and Ruby Remati, Israel’s Shelly Bobritsky and Ariel Nassee and Dutch duet Bregje and Noortje de Brouwer all had very strong preliminary swims and are within striking distance of the podium. Add the Chinese twins Liuyi Wang and Qianyi Wang to the mix and this final is sure to be exciting and will come down to the perfect execution of routines.
Men Solo Free Preliminaries
Ten men will be battling it out to win the first-ever World Champion title and gold medal in the Free Solo event. After winning the silver medal in the Technical event, USA’s Kenneth Gaudet set the standard for the final round by entering with the highest difficulty score, and despite receiving one base mark, still ranking in first. However, Gaudet will have to bring his best as he will be joined by Technical Solo Bronze medalist from Kazakhstan Eduard Kim, as well as Mixed Duet Gold, Japan’s Yotaro Sato, and Silver medalist Spain’s Dennis Gonzalez Boneu.
Schedule & Results
The full results can be found on the World Aquatics Website. The schedule for the Artistic Swimming Championships (local time GMT +9) is as follows:
Wednesday July 19th
16:30 Men Solo Free Finals
19:30 Women Solo Free Finals
Thursday July 20th
10:00 Mixed Team Free Preliminaries
19:30 Women Duet Free Finals
Friday July 21st
10:00 Mixed Duet Free Preliminaries
19:30 Mixed Team Free Finals
Saturday July 22nd
10:00 Mixed Duet Free Finals