After a one-day break, artistic swimming was back on in the Olympic Aquatics Centre for Paris 2024 with the technical duet routine.

Sadly, only 17 of the 18 qualified countries took part in this first half of the duet competition. Indeed, the Italian Swimming Federation unfortunately announced in the morning that it had to withdraw from this duet competition as Linda Cerruti was ill and unable to compete. As reserves aren’t allowed for duets at the Olympic Games, it was impossible to substitute another swimmer to compete in Cerruti’s place.

For the first time, the duet event also followed the team event. This scheduling means that duets exclusively competing in this category might have been at a slight advantage, arriving with fresher legs, arms and minds than those who have just completed three intense days of team competition. 

There was also no preliminary round at these Games. The duets will only appear twice on the Olympic stage: once for the technical duet, and once tonight for the free duet, with the medals based once again on the combined score from the technical and free routines.

 

Once more, the results took way too long to become official following (a) protest(s) at the end of this event. While the competition ended around 9:00 pm, the results only became official at 11:00 pm. They indicated that Greece had successfully appealed its basemark, and were now ranked eighth. Again, to have such a delay between the end of the competition and the results becoming official – especially when including a change in the rankings – is unacceptable and a poor reflection of the sport.

At the end of the day, four sets of twin or triplet sisters finished in the top five of this technical duet event, with only the fourth-placed British pair separating them.

Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi were absolutely outstanding once more, keeping up the People’s Republic of China’s momentum after gold in the team event. The twins, who are the reigning World Champions, performed their “Lotus” routine almost effortlessly, flying from one element to the next. They scored 276.7867 to take the lead.

“It was a challenge that we focused on the three team routines rather than our duet routines recently,” Liyui said. ‘We tried hard to practice and remember our routines yesterday. I believe all the duet swimmers met the same difficulty as we do.”

“We really enjoyed the moment because it is the first time that we have competed together at the Olympic Games,” Qianyi added. “Liuyi got injured and did not compete in the Tokyo Olympics, while I did. We will try our best in the duet free.”

The next four spots all belong to Europe, with the pairs of Austria, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ukraine all in the hunt for a podium finish. 

Triplet sisters Anna-Maria and Eirini Alexandri of Austria have come to Paris – their third Olympic Games – as strong medal contenders. In 2023, the pair claimed two gold medals at the European Championships, qualifying to these Olympics as a result, before becoming World Champions in free duet a few weeks later.

Between lingering injuries, illnesses and other issues,  the 2024 season has been a bit more rocky for the two sisters, who in turn, haven’t competed much. However, they were superb in this first routine and extremely secure in their technical elements, scoring 267.2533 on their “We Will Rock You” choreography to lie in second place.

The next three duets are incredibly close, with only 4.2466 points separating them, and the fifth-place duet placing less than seven points behind Austria. Bregje and Noortje de Brouwer, reigning European Champions, currently lie in third with a score of 264.7066 for their “Disco” routine, but Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe, reigning vice-European Champions and world bronze medalists, are only 0.6784 behind and ready to challenge. 

Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva are in fifth with 260.4600 for their “War Stories” routine. The twins were pleased with their performance today, especially as it was also in front of their mother, who traveled from Ukraine to see them swim – it is only the second time she sees them in-person in an international competition.

“This result is a great success for us,” Maryna said. “We are so excited to represent our country, it’s a big responsibility and an honor to be here. Especially after Doha [World Championships], which was very bad for the Ukrainian team. After that competition, we wanted to stop, we couldn’t imagine we would be here in the Olympic Games. The sport is totally different now, it’s not the sport we started doing in our childhood. Now it is very difficult physically, especially the heavy load on the shoulders. Some duets try to do a big difficulty, but we don’t know how they can do this, it’s crazy. It’s too much for us, and we still want to try to show the beauty of the sport in our routines.”

The duets of Japan (257.3533), Spain (254.0816) and Greece (250.4584) round out the top eight. Sofia Evangelia Malkogeorgou and Evangelia Platanioti had declared the highest Degree of Difficulty (DD) of the event with 43.20. They had originally received a basemark on their first hybrid, but successfully appealed it and eventually received their full DD.

After unveiling a brand new choreography here titled “Sunrise”, Shelly Bobritsky and Ariel Nassee of Israel are currently in ninth place with a total of 243.0666. 

 

Anastasiya Bayandina and Romane Lunel of France also showcased a new routine while making their debut as a duet simultaneously – an incredible feat especially at the Olympic Games. The Frenchwomen were up first and swam to the very popular and upbeat song “Born to Be Alive”, which was written by French singer Patrick Hernandez. They scored 241.3116 to finish 10th.

“We had one day to recover and get back into our own bubble after the team events,” Lunel said. “It did us good, but we’re still tired and that’s not easy to manage. We managed to put together a good duet tonight, and that’s the main thing. We haven’t had any basemarks yet, and it’s out of the question for us to have any by the end of this competition.”

“It was a bit stressful because it was the first time we were showing this routine,” Bayandina added. “But it was really joyful and pleasant to share this moment. We received our full difficulty, which is what we wanted.”

It was a bit of a more heartbreaking night for other pairs. 19-year-old Canada‘s Audrey Lamothe lost her timing on the final hybrid of the routine, which led to a basemark as well as heavy synchronization deductions. She and Jacqueline Simoneau currently lie in 15th place, and are virtually out of contention for a medal.

“Today didn’t represent the work that we’ve put into this season,” Lamothe said. “We’ve had a very good season in a short period of time, we only started working together in December. Today was just not our day. Personally, I’m pretty disappointed in myself. I didn’t give the performance I wanted to give alongside Jackie. It’s a privilege to be with this third-time Olympian. I feel like I let her down, but I know it’s teamwork and we’ll just come back stronger for the free duet.”

“It doesn’t fall onto one person’s shoulders,” Simoneau continued. “It was a shared decision that we made to increase our degree of difficulty and to have one of the highest in the world. Of course, it comes with a risk. We had a killer warm-up, we had an amazing time, but those three minutes in the pool tonight just weren’t our three minutes. You have good days, you have bad days, and that’s the beauty of sport. You move on, you learn from them.” 

Similarly, the duet of the USA was clearly out of sync in their first free hybrid, which somehow didn’t result in a basemark, but the major synchronization deductions left them in 11th place. 

The artistic swimming competition at these Olympic Games concludes tonight at 7:30 pm with the free duet routine. 

ARTICLE BY CHRISTINA MARMET

Cover photo: Xinhua/Xia Yifang

If you’ve enjoyed our coverage, please consider donating to Inside Synchro! Any amount helps us run the site and travel costs to cover meets during the season.