China dominated the last team event on the World Aquatics Championships - Fukuoka 2023 programme at the Marine Messe A Aquatic Center in Fukuoka, to claim first place. Japan added a silver and remained at the top of the medal table, while Ukraine made it to the podium for the first this week, with bronze medal.
FREE TEAM
China was still almost thirty points ahead of the field in the preliminary round, with one base mark, and lowered their declared difficulty for the finals to 47.35. The strategy paid off with an improved final score of 329.1687 points for a routine themed “Gravitation”, choreographed to a compilation of music produced by Two Steps from Hell. Team China began the performance with a breathtaking human bridge acrobatic move that set a tone which continued until the very last second. After previously winning the Acrobatics event, the Chinese had struggled in the Technical Team event to a seventh-place finish.
I think we have done well today. Everyone in our team was fighting for this competition and we did our best to focus. We had a great performance. For this competition we trained hard every day and every athlete is tired and exhausted. But we helped each other, and we inspired each other.
With the support of the crowd, hometown favourites Team Japan were able to execute a flawless performance to receive the full declared difficulty score, 45.85, for a total of 317.8085 points. Japan’s routine “Chess”, with a powerful ending simulating a “checkmate” of the other competitors, was creative and fast paced. Changes in spinning direction and patterns were executed beautifully.
While Japan received one base mark in the preliminary round, Megumu Yoshida talked about the relief of swimming the finals without errors: “I'm relieved that we achieved our goal of swimming without a base mark. After finishing the preliminary we changed the composition a little, so everyone was quite nervous and challenged, but I think in the final we were able to swim together as one.”
After struggling throughout the Championships with base marks in the final rounds, and failing to make it onto the podium, Ukraine performed a very appropriately themed “Team of Brave” choreography to claim the bronze medal with 256.2415 points. The gap between China and Japan and the rest of the field was significant. Vladyslava Aleksiiva explained: “We tried to do our best but we had two base marks. We don’t know exactly what the reason was, but we will check later with the team to see what happened. For now, we are happy with our results… it could be better, but we will see.”
Who to Watch in the Last Final in Fukuoka
It has been an exciting week of Artistic Swimming events, and a first World Aquatics Championship under the new scoring system. The Mixed Free Duet is the final event to be contested, before all athletes have the chance to gather in the fun and exciting Gala event.
2022 Budapest World Championships bronze medallists and winners of the bronze medal earlier this week in the Technical Mixed Duet, Wentao Cheng and Haoyu Shi, are leading the twelve finalists.
The Chinese are followed closely by the Spanish duo Dennis Gonzalez Boneu and Mireia Hernandez Luna. Gonzalez Boneu, the World Champion in the Male Free Solo, also is the silver medalist in the Technical Mixed Duet with partner Emma Garcia.
Colombian duet, Jennifer Cerquera Hatiusca and Gustavo Sanchez, and Nargiza Bolatova and Eduard Kim representing Kazakhstan, together with Mexico’s Miranda Barrera Jimenez and Diego Villalobos Carrillo, all had strong enough swims in the preliminary round to end up on the podium.
SCHEDULE & RESULTS
The full results can be found on the World Aquatics Website. The schedule for the Artistic Swimming competitions (local time GMT +9) is as follows:
Saturday July 22nd
- 10:00 Mixed Duet Free Finals
- 12:00 Gala