Silver in synchronized swimming: Spain takes a giant step towards the Paris Games

The war in Ukraine destroyed the most advanced teams in synchronized swimming.

Russia, gold, and Ukraine, bronze at the 2021 Tokyo Games, disappeared from the competition.

From that podium remains China, which won silver, and which this Tuesday won gold in the most anticipated outcome of the team technical final of the Swimming World Cups being held in Doha.

The surprising part of the tournament was starred by Spain, which won silver by two hundredths of a point, a blink in the choreography, a drop in the cascade of sporting and bureaucratic procedures that lead to the Paris Games next summer.

“Incredible!” exclaimed Paula Ramírez, the disciplined veteran of the Spanish team, perhaps surprised by the color of the trophy.

“We are in a dream;

We were going for the medal but having achieved silver makes us very proud because we worked a lot.

I have been competing for many years and I have never seen so many countries so well.

Overcoming them gives us all the energy for the free team.”

Never have so many been so good, and never have Russia and Ukraine, the world's most prolific hotbeds of dancers and gymnasts per capita, been so bad.

The show goes on without them.

No one makes an effort to look beyond last summer.

The unscathed celebrate the new order.

The organizers sanction it.

The judges scored China with 299.87 points, Spain with 275.89, and Japan with 275.87.

The result represents a giant step for the Spanish team, led by the patient Mayuko Fujiki.

Finally, after 12 years adrift, they sight land.

Seventh in Tokyo, Spain takes advantage of the geopolitical situation to make its move and, in the process, stop the advance of Japan, which came in fourth place in the Games in which it hosted.

Spanish excellence in technical tests, the routine of movements and figures of aquatic ballet pre-established by the regulations, serves as a starting point for Fuyiki and her swimmers.

The staging of

, the choreography based on Leonard Bernstein's theme for

, exhibited the kind of energetic and colorful optimism that only Spanish women know how to interpret.

But only if they noticeably improve their acrobatics and free swimming routines will they be favorites for a medal in Paris.

“Brilliant”

At the moment, Spain only dominates one of the three legs of the discipline.

It is not a small thing, considering the depression suffered by the team, seventh in Tokyo after the long downward journey that began after the silver won at the London 2012 Games and the subsequent dismissal of the coach, Ana Tarrés, for alleged bad behavior. Treatments reported in the media anonymously, or in hushed tones, never proven before a judge.

The Supreme Court declared the dismissal unfair and since then Tarrés, always risk-taking, always at the limit of choreographic possibilities, inhibits her creative fervor in the service of China's superstructured framework.

The gold of the great power of Asia was a success for the Catalan coach, who clapped her hands on the edge of the pool after seeing her swimmers execute the most devilish jump of the competition.

Prudente, Tarrés' successor in Spain, the Japanese Mayuko Fujiki, preferred to aim for the free final on Friday, where the Olympic pass will be sealed.

“Our big goal is to get into the top-five to go to the Games,” she said.

“We have calculated many details and we have decided not to risk anything, nothing, nothing, if there was a risk of difficulty.

If the difficulty opened the door for us to be first as well as to fall to eighth place, we did not take it.

Not having suffered any

[penalty for an execution error that deducts points] means that we are on the right track.

Today these girls were brilliant.”

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