Duet, Women

Women from Russia had won the artistic duet swimming (known prior to 2017 as synchronized swimming) for the past six editions of the Olympics. Competing under the banner of “Russian Olympic Committee athletes”, as Russia had been banned from competing under its own flag due to its large-scale doping programs, Svetlana Romashina and Svetlana Kolesnichenko were aiming to extend that streak. Romashina had an impressive competitive history: she had captured Olympic gold in the duet with Nataliya Ishchenko in 2012 and 2016 and in the team event from 2008 through 2016. Since 2005, she had won 21 titles at the World Championships and 13 at the Europeans, never placing lower than first. Kolesnichenko was only relatively less decorated: she had team gold from the 2016 Rio Games, 16 titles from the World Championships, and 11 from the Europeans.

As expected, the Russians, with a routine themed around spiders, took gold comfortably, making Romashina the first artistic swimmer to earn six Olympic gold medals. The Chinese duo of Huang Xuechen and Sun Wenyan, who had been the runners-up in Rio, repeated their silver medal performance in Tokyo with a snake-themed routine. Huang in particular had a history of coming second to the Russians – and Romashina – with silver medals at the Worlds stretching back to 2009. The Ukrainian duo of Marta Fiedina and Anastasiya Savchuk, meanwhile, captured bronze, the country’s first Olympic medal in the sport. Both had won numerous medals at the World and European Championships across various disciplines, Fiedina since 2018 and Savchuk since 2014. Japan’s Yukiko Inui, who had hoped to defend her bronze medal from Rio with a new partner, Megumu Yoshida, placed fourth. The most unfortune duo, however, were the Greeks, who were poised to qualify for the final after the technical routine, but had to withdraw following a positive COVID-19 test from one of the team members.