If there was ever any debate surrounding who is the greatest artistic swimmer of all time, Svetlana Romashina shut it down by winning her sixth Olympic gold medal in the discipline at the Tokyo Games. She now stands alone as the most decorated athlete in her sport, and she has a chance to add a seventh medal in the team competition Saturday.
Romashina partnered with Svetlana Kolesnichenko to perform the top-scoring routines of all three elements of the competition, and the pair capped off their dominant run with a near-perfect 98.800 in the final. Their gold-medal routine featured extremely difficult and intricate choreography that was meant to mimic the movements of spiders.
At 31 years, 317 days old, Romashina is the oldest artistic swimmer to ever win an Olympic medal and is the first woman to win three consecutive gold medals in the duet. Since 2000, athletes from Russia have won every artistic swimming gold.
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Huang Xuechen and Sun Wenyan both picked up their fourth Olympic silver in the event with a score of 96.900 for their final free routine. The pair performed snake-themed choreography and finished 3.458 points behind the Russian duo. In addition to her four silver medals, Huang also has two bronze
Bronze medalists Marta Fedina and Anastasiya Savchuk captured Ukraine's first-ever Olympic medals in artistic swimming. Their final routine scored a 95.600 and cemented their spot on the podium.
Americans Anita Alvarez and Lindi Schroeder just missed qualifying for finals after finishing the preliminary rounds in13th.
