The People’s Republic of China has announced an experienced roster of nine artistic swimmers for the Olympic Games, with the highly fancied team heading to Paris in search of the nation’s first Olympic gold medal in Artistic Swimming.
In the three years since Tokyo 2020, the People’s Republic of China has become the dominant force in artistic swimming. At a World Championships level prior to Budapest 2022, the nation had won just one gold medal in forty-nine years of competition. After Doha 2024, that number had rocketed to fifteen.
While some of that success can be attributed to the absence of sanctioned teams at international competitions over that period, the Chinese team has embraced the new rule changes that overhauled the sport at the start of 2023.
Even prior to the rule changes, there were signs China was quickly becoming a new force in artistic swimming. Winning the Team Technical and Team Free gold medals at Budapest 2022, China would then go on to win the Team Technical and Team Acrobatic events at Fukuoka 2023, before clean sweeping the Team Technical, Team Free, and Team Acrobatic events at Doha 2024.
Along with their recent dominance has been a high degree of consistency. Of the eight swimmers named on the Chinese team for Paris 2024; six of them have been part of all seven World Championships team gold medals won by China since 2022.
When looking at results since the adoption of the new rules in Artistic Swimming - Feng Yu, Chang Hao, Wang Ciyue, Zhang Yayi, Xiao Yanning, and Xiang Binxuan have won five of the six team gold medals on offer at a World Championships level.
Adding further strength to the roster are twins Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi, who although only being part of five of the team golds since Budapest 2022, are both ten-time world champions having paired for gold medals in the Duet Technical and Duet Free at both Budapest 2022 and Doha 2024.
While a reserve Chinese team has been competing across most legs of the current Artistic Swimming World Cup, the eight Paris swimmers did win gold in the Team Free event at the Beijing leg where they exceeded their Doha 2024 score.
After the final, Chinese head coach Zhang Xiaohuan told World Aquatics that the team was continuing to finesse their routine in line with the updated rules.
“We have done a good job by testing our understanding of the new rules. We would love to see the sport get more variety types of movements and more elegant," said Xiaohuan.
Heading into Paris the Chinese team will be one of the oldest in the pool with an average age of nearly twenty-six. That said, it has clearly been a three-year project with this group of swimmers since Tokyo, with the team now on the final stretch as they aim to win the People’s Republic of China’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in artistic swimming.