The very young Spanish duo made up of Alisa Ozhogina and Iris Tio took the first step to access the final of the Tokyo Olympic Games, after finishing in ninth position in the free routine of the preliminaries with a score of 88.3000 points.
A qualification that rewarded the great performance of the Spanish duo, who despite their nerves due to their debut in the Olympic Games , defended their choreography with force and, above all, with character, with a lot of character. Just as the judges were able to appreciate, who especially highlighted the artistic aspect of the Spanish duo’s performance, a choreography with flamenco airs under the chords of La Malaguena by Ernesto Lecuona.
A complete declaration of intentions from the Spanish duo, who, in the absence of an audience in the stands of the Tokyo Aquatic Center, wanted to win the hearts of the judges with a passionate performance.The looks, the gestures, the intensity transmitted by both Iris Tio and Alisa Ozhogina in each of their movements seemed to convince the jury that, with a score of 88,300 points, they placed the team in ninth position .
A position that the Spanish duo will find difficult to overcome both in the technical routine and in the final, given the stratification of a sport, artistic swimming, in which before each major competition you can practically know the order of the classification, with hardly any error range.
Neither Iris Tio nor Alisa Ozhogina, two young women who have only been working together for a year, have managed to acquire the status of Russian, Japanese and Chinese, who took the ranking. But that is not, for the moment, the objective of the Spanish team. Today, as Sevillian Alisa Ozhogina, only 20 years old, pointed out, they compete “against themselves” rather than against their rivals.
” It is the first year that we swim together, it is our first Olympic Games and we are facing duos that have been working for a long time. We want to learn from them and go step by step reaching them”, Ozhogina pointed out.
A phrase that Iris Tio, only 18 years old, insisted on, emphasizing that the idea is “to continue improving every day” rather than reaching a specific position”. “The objective is clearly to improve ourselves, to try in each competition to raise the grade a little more. It would be great to be in the final, but I would be equally happy seeing in the video that I have improved and knowing that our coach –Mayuko Fujiki– is satisfied with us”, explained Tio.
And the truth is that the Spanish coaches have reasons to be happy with the performance of the young Spanish team that knew how to perfectly control the nerves of an entire Olympic premiere.” Since we saw the competition pool for the first time we have had our hair stand on end ” recognized Iris Tio, who like Alisa Ozhogina seemed free themselves completely after completing their performance.
“It has been a dream. Finally, after everything that has happened with the pandemic and even if it is a year later, now we can say that we have swum in the Olympic Games, that we have come this far,” Ozhogina said.
Nerves and feelings typical of the debut that the Russian Svetlana Ronashina left behind a long time ago, who is on her way to turning 32, seeks to add two gold medals in Tokyo, one in duos and one in teams, to add to the five gold medals that already counts in his palmares.
And it is that when Alisa Ozhogina and Iris Tio began to take their first steps in the pool, Romashina was already part of the Russian team that won the gold medal at the Beijing Games. A first step on the podium that Romashina climbed twice again in both the 2012 and 2016 Games.
In fact, the Russian swimmer has not lost any in the Olympic Games, World Cups or Europeans. A spectacular streak that Romashina is willing to prolong in Tokyo together with Svetlana Kolesnichenko.
