The second day of the Paris World Cup delivered excitement from start to finish, building in intensity as the competition progressed.
The morning kicked off with the free duet final, where Japan’s Kobayashi Uta and Sato Tomoka made a stunning debut together in this event. Switzerland’s Melody Halbeisen and Aimée Michel also made history, securing their country’s first-ever World Cup medal, with a well-earned silver.
The afternoon brought even more action with the technical mixed duet, where Great Britain’s Ranjuo Tomblin and Holly Hughes continued their nation’s golden streak. But it was the technical team final that truly stole the show, featuring some of the world’s best nations in artistic swimming and a brand-new, crowd-pleasing routine from Spain for gold.
In the morning, nine nations took part in the women’s free duet, which saw Japan’s Kobayashi Uta and Sato Tomoka take the win with a total score of 214.9546. While Sato made her way into the duet event last season, it was a first for Kobayashi but she clearly handled it well.
The two unveiled a new routine set to the theme of “Oni”, which is a kind of demon in Japanese folklore. Besides receiving a small basemark on their first acrobatic move, they were clearly above the rest of the field in both execution and artistic impression, and were undoubtedly satisfied about their first time out together in this event.
“We have been friends for a long time,” Sato said. “We were already swimming together on the junior team for 6 years, so I think our partnership is perfect.”
Melody Halbeisen and Aimée Michel of Switzerland claimed their country’s first World Cup medal, winning silver with a score of 201.4163 for their tremendous performance.
“It’s a lot of emotions to get this medal,” Halbeisen said. “We worked a lot to get this, in training but also outside of the pool. This medal is really meaningful to us, and it gives us more motivation and determination to keep going. We have a strong bond together, we’re also best friends and spend a lot of time together, this helps us a lot in training and competition too.”
Halbeisen and Michel, both 17 years old, have been swimming duet together for over five years already, and showcased fantastic energy and artistry in the water; something which has come to be expected of them since they first came onto the international stage at the 2022 European Youth Championships.
“The goal was to swim with energy until the end and present our strength which is artistic impression,” Michel continued. “The judges really played the game and gave a lot of attention to artistic impression, so we are very happy about that.”
The junior duet of Greece, with Estella Karamanidou and Ilektra Rapti, secured the bronze medal with their “Owls” routine and a total score of 182.1747.
The duets of Kazakhstan and Georgia had come in with two of the three highest declared Degrees of Difficulty (DD) of the event, but that gamble didn’t pay off as the athletes couldn’t quite maintain the execution of everything declared.
Great Britain clinched its second gold of this World Cup as Ranjuo Tomblin and Holly Hughes won the technical mixed duet event with a score of 182.9325. This was Tomblin’s second World Cup in less than 24 hours, and marked yet again the history of British artistic swimming.
“Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this has happened,” Tomblin said. “We’re obviously very happy about this performance. There’s still quite a few errors that we need to work on, but we need to take this experience, work on our routines, maybe up our DD a little and really get the artistic impression in for the bigger competitions later this year.”
The two had only made their debuts together last year at the World Junior Championships, and swam a new routine here set to the song “Sax” by Fleur East.
“This is my first senior competition swimming with Ranjuo,” Hughes said. “Yesterday he got the gold medal so I thought, ‘Ok, high expectations (laughs)’. But it seems we’ve met them. He’s very encouraging, he really helps me get into this competition setting.”
Thanks to a recent one-per-country rule modification to allow a country to win multiple medals in the same event, Spain claimed both silver and bronze in this technical mixed duet final.
Jordi Caceres and Aurora Lazaro, who only just joined the senior squad this year, came out ahead of teammates Dennis Gonzalez Boneu and Sara Saldana.
Caceres and Lazaro swam to the football club anthem of the Ceuta Football Club, a club that Lazaro is a fan of. They scored 170.2192, with one basemark on their first acrobatic move, and won silver.
For their first time out together as well, Gonzalez Boneu and Saldana settled for bronze with a score of 167.4617. They swam to the theme of “Hip Hop”, which had been used last season in the free mixed duet event.
Unfortunately, they received two basemarks but their high artistic impression score – the highest of the final – helped them hang on to third place, only 0.1359 points ahead of Israel.
“It’s a powerful routine,” Gonzalez Boneu said. “We showed this in the artistic impression and we are happy about that score. But we had mistakes that we have to improve on. These things will make us better for the next competitions. We feel so happy to be on the podium together with our teammates too, this is an amazing feeling.”
The day concluded with what will arguably become the highlight of this entire World Cup: the technical team final.
It was a stacked field, with four of the top five nations of the Paris Olympic Games getting their 2025 seasons started. In total, 10 nations entered the event for a total of 12 routines, with France and Kazakhstan represented by both their junior and senior squads.
The team of Spain came in as the reigning vice-World Champions, and had also ranked second in this routine at the Olympic Games. The Spanish, now under the guidance of head coach Andrea Fuentes, unveiled their new “Backstreet Boys” choreography in Paris, and clinched gold by a landslide with 273.7066.
“This idea for this routine came at the beginning of the season,” Alisa Ozhogina explained. “We tried a lot of different music, and Andrea said,’What do you think about Backstreet Boys?’ Some of the girls on the team had gone to a concert in 2018 or something, and they enjoyed it a lot. So, sometimes we would put Backstreet Boys on for our warmup. So when she put on this song and started finding the choreography, we all decided this was our routine.”
Their energy was indeed contagious, and it was quickly obvious to all how much they enjoyed swimming this routine. Their performance was clutch, especially from Lilou Lluis who was originally the reserve but stepped up on the last day of official training to fill in for Paula Ramirez.
“We enjoyed that so much,” Ozhogina said. “It was probably the best run-through we have ever done. The public was amazing so it was an incredible experience.”
Japan, fifth overall at the Olympics but reigning World bronze medalists in this event, claimed silver with a score of 257.2774. The Japanese squad, also coming in with a new coach Miyakawa Miya, showed impeccable technique and precise execution in their new “Basketball” routine.
Both Spain and Japan end their Paris campaign by winning a medal in every event they had entered. Spain leaves the French capital with six medals, three golds, one silver and two bronze, while Japan secured three medals, one gold and two silvers.
The team of the U.S., Olympic silver medalists, also showcased their new choreography for the first time, set to the theme of Peacocks to claim bronze with 255.9350. The Americans started training with new head coach Tammy McGregor last fall, and had looked forward to showing what they had been up to with this new staff and team.
“We were really excited to swim this new routine and show everyone what we’ve been working on,” Jaime Czarkowski said. “It’s only been a couple of months but we’re proud of the progress we’ve already made. We have new, young swimmers coming up who bring a lot of energy and excitement, and we also have more experienced people who are able to guide them. Together we mesh well and we both bring positives.”
It ended up being quite a close finish for bronze between the U.S. and France, with both nations separated by only 1.4634 points.
France kept its Olympic “Journey in Space” choreography for this meet, albeit modified for the latest rules, and finished fourth with a score of 254.4716. Although the French had declared the highest DD of the evening, they mostly lost out on artistic impression compared to the Americans.
The competition wraps up tomorrow with the men and women’s free solo starting at 12:30am, followed by the free mixed duet and the acrobatic team event.
ARTICLE BY CHRISTINA MARMET
Photo: FFN / Anh Viet Chau
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