The Saint-Denis Aquatic Center, the very venue where Spain won the Olympic bronze in 2024, brought luck again to the Spanish team this Saturday, although this time the color was silver. And twice over. Iris Tió closed a marathon day with two medals in just an hour and a half, something unusual even for a discipline as physically demanding as artistic swimming.
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The second of those medals came in the women’s free duet, the event in which Spain has been defending the world title since last summer. Alongside Lilou Lluís, Tió scored 315.6442 points, with 144.5500 in artistic impression, the highest score in that category in the entire final. It was not enough for gold: the Greek sisters Anna Maria and Eirini Marina Alexandri won with 316.3315 points, just six tenths ahead, supported by the highest difficulty in the final, with a score of 68.30, and a clean execution from start to finish. It was their second gold medal in two days, after also winning the technical duet on Friday. The podium was completed by Maiia Doroshko and Aleksandra Shmidt, competing under the neutral athletes’ flag, in a notable return to continental competition.
The fact that silver felt like too little says a lot about how high the level of demand has reached for the Spanish team. Tió and Lluís are no ordinary pair: they are the current world champions in this discipline, a title they won last summer in Singapore, which was Spain’s first-ever gold medal in a World Championship free duet. With that background, finishing just six tenths behind the European gold, no matter how small the margin, leaves a bittersweet taste despite adding another medal to Spain’s tally.
The first silver of the day had arrived a few hours earlier, also with Tió as the protagonist, this time alongside Dennis González in the mixed free duet. The Catalan swimmer was returning to competition after overcoming a shoulder injury that had kept him away from the pools, and his comeback could not have been more perfect: European runners-up by just three tenths of a difference with Great Britain. Between one final and the other, Tió barely had time to rest, making the level shown in both routines even more remarkable.
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The weekend, however, had started quite differently for the swimmer. On Friday, alongside Lluís herself, she finished eighth in the technical duet after a mistake in the first required element of the routine, a stumble that contrasted with the favorite status both had upon reaching that final after posting the highest score in the preliminary rounds. Twenty-four hours later, the revenge was complete: two silvers in the same day erased any trace of that initial disappointment and confirmed that it had only been a minor setback.
The European Championships in Saint-Denis give no respite to the Spanish team. This Sunday morning, starting at nine, the team event preliminaries begin with “La Locura,” the choreography that already left a mark in the last edition of the championship. Tió, not participating in this event, will finally be able to take a break after a hectic start to the European Championships. In the afternoon, from 16:00 hours, Spain will again have representation in a final, this time in the junior category: Jordi Cáceres and Carla Lorenzo, debutants in the senior circuit, will compete in the mixed technical duet after having already won silver at the Pontevedra World Cup just two months ago.
