Day two in Athens saw athletes compete in the Duet, Mixed Duet, and Mixed Team events compete. Surrounded by Olympic history, many of the future elite artistic swimming athletes are making their international debut in the Kypros pool of the Hellenic Army Academy.

Since the first inclusion of artistic swimming males at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, the number of competing men has steadily increased.

With only one year between the second and third editions of the Artistic Swimming Youth World Championships due to the pandemic, the growth in the number of male athletes in Athens compared to Charlotte is another positive and exciting development for the sport’s future.

Duet Free Women

A strong field of twenty-eight duets showcased their abilities in the popular Olympic event. The first three ranked pairs, Americans Ghizal Akbar and Kanako Field, Japanese duo Manami Dodo and Nao Shirahase, and the crowd favourites – Greece’s Estella Karamanidou and Vasiliki Thanou – separated only by six points.

Spain’s Ariadna Benito and Alba Rosal Iglesias, France’s Lou Thuillier and  Romane Temessek, and twin sisters Keyi and Kexin Xu from China follow a little further behind.

However, with the new scoring system, and the importance of the athlete’s execution of the declared difficulties, the medals can be claimed by any pair that makes it into the final slated for Sunday morning.

Mixed Duet Free|Preliminaries

China’s Shuncheng Yang continued his impressive showing in Athens as he partnered with Heyue Ji in the Mixed Duet event. Scoring 21.1 for difficulty, the pair accumulated 171.6626 points to rank first heading into the figure competition.

Following closely behind in second position are the USA with Abigail Gallon and Michael Chan.  

The top five ranked mixed pairs include Spain’s Helena Lopez Castrillo and Eneko Sanchez Aguilar, Greece’s Artemi Koutraki and Stylianos Koukouselis Fouskis, and Kazakhstan’s Aldiyar Ramazanov and Yasmina Islamova. 

Last year in Charlotte, only six Mixed Duets competed, today in Athens there were fourteen entries.  The impressive growth makes tomorrow’s Figures event significant as only the top twelve pairs will be qualifying for the final round scheduled for tomorrow evening.

Mixed Team Free | Preliminaries

Greece and Japan lead the ranking with a relatively large difference over the rest of the field.

Spain, France, and USA, the third through fifth-ranked teams after the preliminary rounds, all were unable to execute their declared difficulties. With the artistic impression scores of the best ten teams today ranging from about 100 to 111 points, the final event will be thrilling to watch.

What’s Up Next?

All athletes will participate in the Figures competition which will account for fifty percent of the final scores. Follow the competition live and find all results on the World Aquatics website. The schedule for all finals for this weekend is as follows (all times shown in EET)

Friday, 1 September

• 30 Figure
• 18:00 Solo Free Men Final
• 19:30 Mixed Duet Free Final

Saturday, 2 September

• 9:30 Solo Free Women Final
• 18:30 Mixed Team Free Combination Final 

Sunday, 3 September

• 9:30 Duet Free Final
• 18:30 Team Free Final
• 20:00 Team Acrobatic