In a highly entertaining Women’s Duet Technical final on Monday night, two-thirds of Austria’s artistic swimming triplets (Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina Alexandri) defeated 11 other duos to claim their second career world title. The top-three finishers were separated by less than seven points.
SINGAPORE – The World Aquatics Championships Arena may have been a former parking lot, but it was rocking Monday night during the Women’s Duet Tech Final. In full stereo, some of the world’s best artistic swimmers vied for medals to tracks like Abba’s “Mamma Mia” (France) Elle King’s “Ex’s & Oh’s” (Spain), the “Mission Impossible” theme (Canada), and Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” (USA).
But the winning program was performed to “Swan Lake.”
The gold medalists, Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina Alexandri, 27, had a long history with “Swan Lake” but under their new coach, Nakajima Takako, they found victory, scoring 307.1451 as the last pair of the night. They also earned the highest impression scores for choreography, performance, and transitions.
The Austrian sisters were thrilled to be on the podium again after withdrawing from the 2024 Doha world championships because Anna-Maria’s dislocated shoulder hadn’t quite healed from the summer of 2023. They had opted instead to prepare their duet for the 2024 Paris Olympics (where they placed fourth in their third Games).
The Alexandris also used “Swan Lake” music at the 2016 Rio Olympics, only a different version.
This year, Eirini-Marina said, “We decided to swim to ‘Swan Lake’ again because it’s very classical and different in comparison to what everybody swims now, which is more rhythmical and faster.”
“Swan Lake has a special place in our hearts,” Anna-Maria added. “We love swimming this routine. I think we transmitted this to the audience.”
China’s Lin Yanhan, 22, and Lin Yanjun, 22, placed second with their Warriors of the Moon Shadow routine, just 5.7394 points off the lead, despite at least one noticeable error in a required element.
Lin Yanjun acknowledged the flaw afterwards. “We made some mistakes in the routine and didn’t complete the movements too well,” she said. “In the past month, we needed to spend some time training the team events and lost some practice time for the duet. There were also some changes in the routine, so maybe we were not as familiar with it as we could have been.”
Neutral athletes Mayya Doroshko, 26, and Tatiana Gayday, 24, claimed the bronze with an India dance performance set to music from the 2019 film “Dust.”
Gayday said, “We tried to take some dancing elements from this film” and translate it to water.
All three medal-winning pairs cleared 300 points for their 2 minute, 20 second routine.
The Alexandris’ victory on Monday was the first by a nation other than Russia, China, or Japan in the 11 editions of Women’s Duet Tech at the world championships, dating back to 2007.
The Austrian sisters were the only medalists on Monday to have made the world championship podium in Duet Tech before, taking bronze in 2022 Budapest.
Also of note: the 2023 gold medalist Moe Higa of Japan placed fourth (less than five points off the podium) with a new partner, Tomoka Sato.
Up Next:
Two more world champions will be crowned on Tuesday: first, in Women’s Solo Free (at 10:00 Singapore time) followed by Team Technical (at 18:30 Singapore time).