The European Artistic Swimming Championships kicked off this Friday at the Centre Aquatique Olympique Métropole du Grand Paris with a bittersweet result for Spain. Dennis González came close to a medal in the men’s technical solo final, while the duo formed by Iris Tió and Lilou Lluis finished their participation in eighth place.
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The Spanish swimmer arrived at this event marked by a difficult year. He took advantage of the season with less competition in the Olympic cycle to undergo surgery on a right shoulder that had been damaged for some time, and the operation revealed more damage than expected. When he finally began to recover, a perforated eardrum forced him to stop again and reduce his presence at these Europeans to only three events.
With that physical toll, he also had to lower the difficulty of his routine, built around Lovely by Billie Eilish. The artistic bet paid off: he earned one of the best impression scores in the final (97.9000), which allowed him to total 235.3817 points and open the competition in the lead. That lead didn’t last long: the British Ranjuo Tomblin comfortably surpassed him (249.3951) and then the Russian Zakhar Trofimov, a debutant and the new junior European champion, snatched the podium from him by four tenths (235.7858). The Italian Filippo Pelati, who paid tribute to Freddie Mercury with a highly difficult performance, took silver, leaving bronze for Trofimov. Still, Dennis was able to congratulate his rivals sportsmanlike, aware of what this result means after the medical ordeal of recent months.
In the women’s technical duet, the reading of the Spanish result requires nuances. Tió and Lluis, who hours earlier had scored the best mark in the preliminary round of the free duet, took to the pool with a choreography inspired by Summer by Vivaldi, already premiered at the Pontevedra European Cup. Their execution was solid in almost all elements and earned them the best artistic impression score of the entire final. The problem came in the initial hybrid, the most demanding passage of the routine, where they received a penalty that lowered their score to 274.0117 points.
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That punctual stumble, and not a poor overall performance, was what relegated them to eighth place, as several favorites went after and surpassed their mark: France, the Neutral Athletes B team, with Russians Doroshko and Minaeva returning after expulsion due to the war in Ukraine, and finally Greece, which with the Alexandri sisters took gold after a year without competing. Great Britain completed the podium.
Spain faces a demanding day today, with Dennis back in the water alongside Iris Tió in the direct final of the mixed free duet (4:00 p.m.), in which Tió will again be a protagonist with several more events throughout the day.
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