Mexico achieves three golds in the artistic swimming World Cup

of the writing

Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday May 16, 2023, p. 2

Mexico had its best harvest in an artistic swimming World Cup this weekend in Egypt, where it won three gold medals and one bronze to rank second in the medal table. Just one step below Spain, power in this discipline, which secured the top with one silver and one bronze more than the tricolor team.

The Mexican participation dazzled from the first day of competitions with the gold medal they won last Saturday in the team technical routine category. The combo made up of Daniela Estrada, Itzamary González, Regina Alferez, María Fernanda Arellano, Glenda Inzunza, Luisa Rodríguez, Pamela Toscano and Jessica Sobrino announced the international leadership sought by the team led by Adriana Loftus, coach of the representation from several decades ago.

Yesterday was the most profitable day for the Mexican team, which opened with gold in a free duet with the legendary artistic swimming couple: Nuria Diosdado and Joana Jiménez.

The tricolors were imposed in a discipline where the subjectivity of the judges qualifies the technical difficulty, the artistic inspiration and the execution.

To stay with the gold, Nuria and Joana obtained 325.6584 points, above the Dutch Bregje de Brouwer and Marloes Steenbeek, silver, with 317.0250, and the Italians Alessia Macchi and Susana Pedotti, bronze with 296.4458.

The Mexicans made a display of great technical difficulty, a section of great importance for the judges, to achieve first place, with an act entitled The flight of the phoenix.

World Aquatics (formerly the International Swimming Federation) approved at the end of last year a new regulation to do this discipline more understandable and much more attractive for the fans. This implies that the judges privilege the technical difficulty and its execution to make this type of swimming more attractive.

Winning the gold medal with this new scoring system was amazing. We declared a high degree of difficulty for this routine and we achieved it, we executed itdeclared Joana Jiménez after winning the gold.

With the new scoring system, if you have a high difficulty and you do it, you will get a high scorehe added.

The bet worked for them, despite the fact that this was the first time they had competed with this routine, so they considered the result simply spectacular. Now they intend to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games through the Pan American Games, and to achieve this they have to be champions.

The day in Soma Bay brought another joy to the Mexicans. They won a third gold in the acrobatics modality, where Regina Alférez, Fernanda Arellano, Daniela Estrada, Itzamary González, Glenda Inzunza, Luisa Rodríguez, Jessica Sobrino and Pame-la Toscano participated.

They did so with an unquestionable score of 227.6626, which pushed Kazakhstan to second place, with 210.0042, and France to third, with 208.9208.

When they were celebrating a successful day, the couple made up of Itzamary González and Diego Villalobos achieved one more metal, bronze, in the mixed free duet modality. Spain won the gold in this test and Colombia obtained the silver.

This was a participation worth celebrating for the Mexican artistic swimming team. However, their best team result is still the fourth place they got at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest.

This is because participation in the World Cups is achieved through invitations to the best eight of the top ten of the ranking, in addition to the fact that some are direct finals and there are no playoffs. While the World Cups need to qualify. The biggest challenge for coach Adriana Loftus is to qualify by teams for Paris 2024, something that Mexico has not achieved since Atlanta 1996.

controversial tour

Three powers of the discipline did not attend this Cup. Russia, Olympic champion for teams and duets, and Ukraine did not participate as a result of the conflict they are going through. While China did not compete in teams or duets.

The trip to Soma Bay was preceded by the controversy related to the scholarships that the artistic swimming team claimed before the National Commission for Physical Culture and Sports (Conade), directed by Ana Guevara.

The support was withdrawn due to the conflict that arose between the Mexican Swimming Federation and World Aquatics, which appointed a Stabilizing Commission after ignoring Kiril Todorov as head of the FMN. The arguments for dismissing him were poor governance and alleged misuse of resources.

Conade withdrew the scholarships from the artistic swimming team, divers and some swimmers who took advantage of the Stabilizing Commission and its competition plans. Guevara argued that the new body did not have legal representation and for this reason Conade was prevented from granting support.

Given this, the international organization spoke out and sent a message to reassure the aquatic community of Mexico, where it assured them that they would be in charge of granting support for competitions, such as this World Cup in Egypt, and all those that preceded it. to the Olympic Games in Paris.

Apart from this pronouncement, the artistic swimming team began a campaign to raise funds by selling swimsuits and which culminated in the support of businessman Carlos Slim and his foundation.

After finishing their successful participation in Egypt, the Ministry of National Defense congratulated their members of the artistic swimming team.

The dedication, discipline and effort of our colleagues, Sergeants Joana Betzabé Jiménez, Luisa Samantha Jailib, Nuria Diosdado, and soldiers Pamela Toscano, Daniela Estrada and Marla Fernanda Arellano, who are part of the Mexican artistic swimming team, are reflected in the gold medal obtained in the Artistic Swimming World Cup 2023published the Sedena on Twitter.