On Thursday, Iris Tio Casas of Spain won her fifth medal (and second gold) in Singapore with a stunning Women’s Duet Free routine with Lilou Lluis Valettte. A new pair from Italy took silver. Neutral B athletes earned the bronze while trying to convey split personalities.
SINGAPORE – The penultimate day of artistic swimming ended with a bang on Thursday night as all new medalists were crowned in the Women’s Duet Free event – and they happened to be the last three pairs to swim.
When Spain’s Iris Tio Casas, 22, and Lilou Lluis Valette, 18, closed the night, they left no doubt that they were the perfect conduits for a program whose theme was the “Essence of Femininity.” Their exquisite and well-matched flexibility and mobility helped the duo earn the night’s highest artistry score (133.35 points) toward a winning total of 282.6087.
Afterwards, Tio Casas said, “I had a super good feeling before swimming the duet tonight. We didn’t expect success in our first year, but we have really good chemistry and we enjoy a lot this duet. We connect. We hope that we have a long future together. If we’ve already done this in our first year, imagine in 10 years.”
It was the fifth medal for Tio Casas in Singapore. She now has two gold and three bronzes – and one event remaining in her schedule.
Italy’s Lucrezia Ruggiero, 25, and Enrica Piccoli, 26, took silver medal merely four months after teaming up in duet. They finished 3.8950 points behind Spain for their “Hypnosis” routine.
Ruggiero said, “Today, we were really strong in our minds. We changed things between the preliminaries and final. We’re really happy about what we did today. It was an unexpected result. We know we can [still] work a lot on this duet. We won European championships, but the world championships are different.”
The Italians were the third-to-last team to go, and when they saw their score, Piccoli didn’t immediately grasp that it meant that she was guaranteed a medal.
“When you see the results, you’re not just understanding it in terms of rankings,” Piccoli said. “You see the scores, and … it was such a surprise for us. We didn’t realise we were above some nations like China.”
Neutral B athletes Mayya Doroshko, 26, and Tatiana Gayday, 24, finished third with a very emotional and dramatic “Split Personality” performance. They had worked with actors to prepare for it.
“We wanted to show all our experience,” Gayday said of their strategy in Singapore. “We decided to do more difficult acrobatic moves [in the final] to have a chance. Everyone wants to win. The pressure is high. So we try to show our best.”
China’s 22-year-old Lin twins placed fourth, less than three points off the podium, with a polished “Shadow of the Moon” program.
France and Japan (the latter plagued by a base mark) followed in fifth and sixth.
Before Spain’s victory on Thursday, only three nations had claimed world championship gold in Women’s Duet Free: Russia (seven times), China (twice) and Austria (in 2023). The Alexandri sisters (who won the 2023 title and, three days ago, had just won gold in Women’s Duet Technical) did not enter Duet Free.
Up Next:
Artistic Swimming concludes on Friday with the last two of its 11 events at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships. Don’t miss the Mixed Duet Free event at 10:00 Singapore time featuring the top qualifiers from Spain: Dennis Gonzalez Boneu and Iris Tio Casas (who will try to win her sixth medal in Singapore). The grand finale will be the Team Acrobatic event at 19:30 Singapore time.