Natalia Ishchenko Wins 2nd Synchronized Swimming Gold at 2015 FINA World Championships

natalia-ishchenko-fina-world-championships-2015

Photo Courtesy: R-Sport / MIA Rossiya Segodnya

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This evening three-time Olympic champion Natalia Ishchenko has captured her second gold medal at the 16th FINA World Championships in Kazan. After a successful duet technical routine event, where she shared the triumph with her long-time partner Svetlana Romashina, Natalia Ishchenko now claimed an individual trophy as well. The Russian synchro swimmer proved to be second to none in the solo free routine.

After the preliminary round, the leader was facing no serious competition from her opponents. Huang Xuechen of China was nearest to the Russian, having followed her in the preliminaries as well. The representative of the People’s Republic of China improved her score by 0.5 points, but it was not enough to hold off a strong challenge and to build up any suspense. The double bronze medallist of the Olympic Games had to be thankful for the second place, given that Ishchenko’s only participation might have been deemed as a victory.

Natalia Ishchenko treated the audience to a new lyrical routine that she performed to the music from the movie Niccolo Paganini: The Devil’s Violinist. Her performance was full of so much passion and profound feelings that spectators couldn’t help but believe her. It looked like the judges were of the same opinion and awarded her with generous 97.2333 points as if hinting that the routine they’ve seen is close to a perfect, top-class standard of synchro swimming performance.

Ona Carbonell, a renowned synchro swimmer and captain of the Spanish national team, completed the podium with 34.9000 points. As it turned out, the final standings were identical with the provisional rankings in the preliminaries.

However, this event was full of other surprises. For example, Greek synchro swimmer Evangelia Platanioti performed her routine to a song of the famous Russian pop singers Grigory Leps and Ani Lorak. Although she earned only 86.3333 and ended up in the tenth place, Evangelia got a round of applause from the audience who definitely appreciated her nod towards the host country.

FINA Worlds 2015. Synchronised swimming. Solo. Free routine.

1. Natalia ISHCHENKO (RUS) – 97.2333

2. Xuechen HUANG (CHN) – 95.7000

3. Ona CARBONELL (ESP) – 94.9000

The above article is a press release submitted to Swimming World. To reach our audience, contact us at newsmaster@swimmingworld.com.

2015 FINA World Championships, Synchronized Swimming: Day 5 Results – Results

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