Lee Ri-young (23, Busan Swimming Federation) and Heo Yoon-seo (18, Apgu Jeong-go) earned a top-10 finish in the women’s duet free at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships.
Lee and Heo finished 10th out of 12 teams with a score of 213.5979 (77.7000 artistic score + 135.8979 performance score) in the women’s artistic swimming duet free final at the Aspire Dome in Doha, Qatar, on Monday.
After qualifying for the final by placing 10th out of 38 teams in the preliminaries the day before, Lee and Heo maintained their 10th place finish in the final.
They also finished 10th in the duet technical final on Friday.
Since 2007, the women’s duet competition at the World Aquatics Championships has been split into two events: technical and free.
The technical is an evaluation of the compulsory elements of the performance, while the free is a free-for-all.
Lee Ri-young and Heo Yoon-seo became the first Korean duet to reach the final of the World Championships in the free.
Unsurprisingly, their 10th place finish is Korea’s best ever in the duet free.
In the duet technical, Lee and Heo also achieved Korea’s best result in the event (10th), surpassing their 12th place finish in Budapest 2022.
Looking at the duet event as a whole, Yunami-Jang Yoon-Kyung at Perth 1998 and Jang Yoon-Kyung-Kim Min-Jung’s ninth place finish at Fukuoka 2001 were the highest ever for a Korean artistic swimming duet in a single event.
Heo Yun-seo, who finished sixth in the solo free at last year’s World Championships in Fukuoka, and Lee Ri-young, who finished ninth in the solo technical, did not compete in the solo event at Doha to focus on qualifying for the Paris Olympics.
Solo is not an Olympic event.
After the duet competition, Lee and Heo will now wait for the results of the gala show to be announced.
There will be 18 teams competing in the Artistic Swimming Duet competition at the Paris Olympics.
The 10 countries that qualified for the team event and the five teams that won the continental championships will be the first to qualify, and the 바카라사이트 three remaining tickets will be distributed according to the results of the World Championships in Doha.
Korea Artistic Swimming’s bid to qualify for the Olympic team competition has already been denied.
The team schedule for the Doha World Championships is not yet complete, and the countries that have qualified for the Paris Olympic Games are not completely clear.
No South Korean artistic swimmers have competed at the Olympic Games since the Park Hyun-sun and Park Hyun-ha sisters in London 2012.
With the luck of Lee Ri-Young and Heo Yoon-Seo, who finished in the top 10 in both the duet technical and free, Korean artistic swimming could make its first Olympic appearance in 12 years.
In the women’s duet free final, Chinese twin sisters Wang Liuyi-Wang Chenyi took first place with a score of 250.7729. They won the duet technical and then the free, making it a two-peat.
Dutch twin sisters Bregje Dubrower-Noordje Dubrower finished second with 250.4979 points and Kate Shortman-Isabel Thorpe (GBR) finished third with 247.2626 points.