History repeats itself. As happened a year ago in the consecutive World-European 2022 double, in Budapest and Rome, once again artistry comes to the rescue of Spanish swimming at the world championships in Fukuoka. The Spanish delegation – second in the medal table – has already won five medals in five days of competition, with the second gold won on Tuesday by the technical routine team led by Mayuko Fujiki; that is, they were crowned in the queen test of the artistic modality of the swimming pool. A historic gold that leads to Paris 2024.
The success, another one of the undervalued artistic swimming, takes on a colossal dimension when put into context: it is the third gold in a World Cup – first in the technical team (usually banned from Russia, after China) – that he has achieved the Spanish artistic planter in history. Tiny, but very powerful school, with its epicenter in the CAR of Sant Cugat, compared to the magnitudes of practitioners of the rivals in the final (Italy, the USA, Japan, China).
Just to place neophytes in the discipline: artistic swimming is practiced in Spain by around 6,000 swimmers (and around 35 men), among whom not even 1,000 state licenses come out (956 in 2020), according to data from the Spanish Swimming Federation (RFEN).
And five medals have already emerged from this nursery in Fukuoka.
It will, of course, be the modality that will bring the most success to the Spanish delegation that traveled to Japan with 74 athletes (14 artistic, 26 water polo players, 7 jumpers, 14 line swimmers and 5 in open water). And, like a year ago in Budapest and Rome, the arts – like probably water polo – will once again ease the drought in the Spanish pool, which does not bode well for great results from Sunday.
The immediate double precedent of the summer of 2022 – as well as the qualifying marks of the spring – do not make us optimistic: at the European in Rome, the RFEN delegation left empty-handed for the first time in the tournament mainland after 16 years; and at the World Cup there were no finalists for the first time since 1998…
In Fukuoka, waiting for the 22 swimmers in line, the artistic colleagues continue to find metals. A day after Fernando Díaz del Río’s historic gold in the men’s technical solo (the first in history, since the modality was premiered on the program of a World Cup), Mayu Fujiki’s artistic skills were shown off with the choreography Ole Fukuoka , a mixture of flamenco fusion and a Japanese folk song, in honor of the creator mother Mayu.
The Spanish team, formed by Iris Tió – already with three medals -, Alisa Ozhogina, Cristina Arambula, Marina García, Txell Mas, Paula Ramírez, Sara Saldaña and Blanca Toledano, who had been sixth in the preliminary, jumped to the water the penultimate ones. They exhibited themselves, without mistakes despite the technical complexity, with empathy and with a wink at the Japanese public, and they received 281 points, which ensured them the bronze. There remained the USA and Italy, which in the performances could not surpass them.
“This gold is the result of many years of work in this sport. We deserve to live this moment, to enjoy it, but we still have a free team and we have to keep fighting”, commented the captain, Granollerina Txell Mas (28), of CN Les Franqueses.
“During the warm-up I saw the energy of the girls, all very focused, with great enthusiasm. I felt they were very prepared. In the exercise we didn’t have a penalty and I thought we couldn’t do better”, added Fujiki (48), who achieves his great success at the head of the Spanish team synchro, 14 years after Anna Tarrés with the ‘gold in free combo in Rome’09.
