World Aquatics Championships: schedule and results of Ukrainians. Chinese strategy: if you don’t defeat Russia, you’ll mess up the World Synchronized Swimming Championships, Hungary
WORLD WATER SPORTS CHAMPIONSHIP
The Russian team won gold medals in the technical group program at the World Championships aquatic species sports in Budapest
Elena VAITSEKHOVSKAYA from Budapest
The mixed zone is a place for emotions. As a rule - joyful. However, the head coach of the Russian team Tatiana Pokrovskaya I came there after my team’s victory, barely containing the most positive feelings. It would seem: a wonderful victory, a huge gap from second place, several debutantes at once became world champions for the first time, what else can we talk about if not this? But the coach was immediately taken aback by what occupied her thoughts most of all: to perform in the combination (a form where Russia is not represented at this championship at all), the Chinese group intends to perform to the music with which a year ago the Russian girls won gold at the Games in Rio -de Janeiro.
THE CHINESE ROBBERY
The famous Olympic “Prayer” was not just a production, of which there have been many throughout Pokrovskaya’s life. It went down in history as a program that has never existed in synchronized swimming and is unlikely to ever exist again. A program with an outstanding, over 99 points, overall result and three judges’ “tens”, which is simply unrealistic under the current judging system, when each performance is dissected almost into molecules. That’s what the synchronized swimmers themselves think, at least.
That Olympic performance in Rio de Janeiro made Pokrovskaya break the usual strategy. Over the course of several Olympic cycles in a row, when the post-Olympic change of generations took place, the coach habitually took the Olympic production and used it as a stencil, training the youngsters in such a way that the athletes not only repeated the best program of the four years, but made it even more expressive. Here the girls begged: anything but “Plea”. Because it is simply impossible to present it to the public better than the program was presented in Rio. Let it remain in the Olympic chronicles as an absolute exclusive and not intended for repetition!
Who could have suspected that the Chinese would have a stranglehold on the Olympic “Prayer”? The lion's share of Chinese progress in synchronized swimming was primarily due to borrowing. Alien elements, alien ideas, alien costumes - I’ve talked a lot about this in my time Tatyana Khaitser, who worked as a synchronized swimming coach in China for several years and once said that the Chinese have no equal in their ability to learn. In principle, they are not able to come up with their own and have never strived for this. But they are brilliant at selecting what they need and brilliant at copying it. Is it any wonder that the Chinese took the best program in the world as a benchmark for this season?
IS EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT PROHIBITED ALLOWED?
An attempt to get an answer to the question for what purpose such an ambiguous borrowing was made was unsuccessful: at the press conference, the Chinese stubbornly pretended that they did not understand what they were talking about.
On the other hand, it’s time to remember the phrase: “Everything that is not prohibited is permitted.” Same complaints Pokrovskaya constant borrowing has been going on since the times when Russia, under her leadership, was just beginning to win. But this is a kind of champion's cross: no matter how dubious the methods by which this or that country is trying to achieve world domination may seem, it is just a strategy. Everyone copies each other in art in one way or another, synchronized swimming is no exception. Well, shouldn’t we take Singapore and Costa Rica as an example when aiming for gold medals? Once upon a time, creative plagiarism, as the coach repeatedly emphasized, was carried out by Spanish women, who thus tried to get closer to Russia as close as possible, now China has replaced Spain in the second position of the world podium. And the most correct thing is to treat this without emotion - as a given.
Moreover, in Budapest, due to the absence of Russians in the combination, there will not even be a full-fledged intrigue - in this type of program the Chinese will not even have to go out of their way to win their only gold. If we talk about the continuation of rivalry in the free program of the groups, in the “technical” final the difference between Russia and China was 1.7944, and this is a large enough value to talk about equality of forces.
The group competitions in the technical program, where Russia won its third victory in five days of competition, brought the synchronized swimmers' tournament to the equator: the athletes had to compete for five sets of awards in free dances.
July 18, Tuesday. SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING. Group. Technical program.
1. RUSSIA - 96.0109. 2. China - 94.2165. 3. Japan - 93.1590.
The Russian team's synchronized swimmers took their fifth gold in the open pool of Budapest, where the World Aquatics Championships are taking place. In the free duet program, there were no equals to Svetlana Kolesnichenko and Alexandra Patskevich, who confidently beat their opponents from China with a difference of 1.7 points. The Chinese women could not cope with the invincible Natalya Ishchenko and Svetlana Romashina, and they could not resist the new generation of our mermaids.
No ideas - take Russian
Former head coach of the Spanish synchronized swimming team, Ana Tarres, has never been shy about borrowing entire sections of programs from her Russian colleagues. Nothing changed with her transfer to the Chinese national team. The duo Jiang Tingting and Jiang Wenwen showed in Budapest a slightly modernized “Mermaids” program, with which our five-time Olympic champions Ishchenko and Romashina shone.
Entire sections of the program and even swimsuits were simply copied by the Chinese team. This is not prohibited by the rules, and, probably, on the one hand, can serve as the best assessment of the work of the Russian synchronized swimming school. But we are not talking about the national teams of Austria or Kazakhstan, for example, for whom medals in the “synchronized” pool can only dream, but about the main competitors.
Pokrovskaya is in pink, Russia is in gold. Synchronized swimmers are invincible
Russian synchronized swimmers won gold at the 2017 World Championships in the group technical program. Completely new composition.
In synchronized swimming, there has long been a practice of showing Olympic programs for the next season after the Games, but only if they are shown by a team from the same country. In Budapest, Chinese women took aim at “Mermaids”. Be it figure skating, the judges would not have given them such high marks - repetitions there, even in one’s own performance, are not welcomed. But this is a different sport in which everyone is already fed up with Russian hegemony.
The Chinese took aim at the Russian “Mermaids”. If it were figure skating, plagiarism would be reflected in the grades.
The new mermaids are no worse than the old ones
That’s why the judges generously gave high scores to the Chinese women. It was clear that if anyone could get ahead of Tintin and Wenwen, it would be the Russians.
By lot, Kolesnichenko and Patskevich competed on the same team after the Chinese, and our girls, together with their mentor Tatyana Danchenko, had the opportunity to accumulate all the emotions associated with outright plagiarism. Moreover, Svetlana and Alexandra themselves performed not in the role of the original, but in the role of new performers of one of the most difficult programs in the history of synchronized swimming.
"Angels and Dimonas." You yourself are disgusting
The Russian mixed duo won silver at the World Championships in synchronized swimming. Men's sports should have a place in the Olympic program.
The new generation of Russian mermaids turned out to be no worse than the previous one. Height, grace, acrobatics - the highest class, unattainable for anyone yet. But the judges were somewhat stingy with their scores for Kolesnichenko and Patskevich. The gap between the Russian and Chinese women in this Olympic event of synchronized swimming could be at least one point more than the final one.
Tatyana Danchenko, who was more nervous than usual before the start of the performance, immediately blossomed and kissed the new world champions. You can exhale, but the residue still remains - when ideas are simply stolen, it is always unpleasant.
Height, grace, acrobatics - the highest class, unattainable for anyone yet. The final score for Kolesnichenko and Patskevich could have been higher.
13 hundredths in favor of Ukraine
The intrigue in the free duet program was not only in the comparison of the original and the copy, but also in the struggle for third place, which was equally claimed by the teams of Ukraine and Japan. Both duets were worthy of bronze medals, but there are practically no equal scores in synchronized swimming.
Golden debut. New star of the Russian synchronized swimming team
The first gold of the Russian team at the World Aquatics Championships was predictably won by synchronized swimmer Svetlana Kolesnichenko.
Therefore, the judges, having calculated everything, rated the program of Anna Voloshina and Elizaveta Yakhno a little higher. Yukiko Inui and Kanami Nakamaki lost to the Ukrainians by only 0.13 points. In synchronized swimming at the World Championships in Budapest, there are still three sets of medals left to compete for - in free programs of mixed duets and groups and in combination. The Russian team will not be represented in the latter event.
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