Emma García and Dennis González made history with the world runner-up victory in Fukuoka in the technical mixed duo event, which is Spain’s second medal in this World Cup in Fukuoka, and the first ever for a Spaniard to win in this discipline.
García and González, who were the best in the preliminary, had to cede the gold to the pair of Japanese brothers Tomoka and Yotaro Sato, who were at a higher level and scored 255.5066 points to the 248.0499 of the Spanish.
The Chinese duo with Wentao Chen and Haoyu Shi completed the podium with 247.30333, in a high-level final, despite the absence of the Italian duo, absent in Fukuoka due to an injury to Giorgio Minisini, surely the best current artistic swimmer.
The Catalans did not suffer any penalties, neither in the preliminary nor in the final, and swam with conviction and lots of energy an electronic version of Vivaldi’s ‘El invierno’, choreographed by Anna Vega and Gemma Mengual.
González is the son of a former swimmer and artistic swimming coach, which is why he started in the discipline. Dennis always remembers the complicated start he had in the arts, joining a group of girls who had been competing together for years and his integration was not good.
He said that he felt alone within the group, but that he had a lot of support from the coaches, until everything changed: “We started to get along and working with them is something that I’m used to now.”
Dennis is a product of the Anna Tarrés school, his coach at Kallípolis in Barcelona, ??a person he has always felt very close to and who helped him overcome his fears.
And little by little, the results began to arrive. He was the junior world champion in Quebec (Canada) in 2022 (technical and free only) and his performances led him to be awarded the ‘Most Projection Male Athlete’.
Pau Ribes, a Spanish pioneer in the discipline, was always his reference; the one that paved the way for Dennis and also for Fernando Díaz del Río, his teammate and who this Monday could add another medal for the Spanish delegation.
Both are the vanguard of the new normality of Spanish artistic swimming, an eminently female discipline that has changed its paradigm with the integration of men with the change in the World Aquatics regulations, the former FINA.
Spain is also one of the leading countries in the integration of men in this discipline, but the numbers stubbornly show that there is still a long way to go. If the Spanish mermaid school has 2,000 licences, the mermaid school has just over twenty.
