European Games
Synchronized swimmers Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina Alexandri followed up two days after their first major title. The Austrian duo, who had already won gold in the technical freestyle at the European Games in Poland on Thursday, also won the title in the free freestyle on Saturday. Since the European Championship titles were also awarded as part of the European Games, the Alexandris can now call themselves double European champions.
24.06.2023 18.32
Online since yesterday, 6.32 p.m. (Update: yesterday, 10 p.m.)
“We cannot describe the emotions, we are overjoyed. We made our dream come true and got gold and the Olympic ticket,” the siblings cheered. The two sisters scored 256.0335 points in Oswiecim and thus confidently prevailed with a lead of 23,1897 points over the Ukrainians Maryna and Wladyslawa Aleksijiwa (232.8438). Bronze went to Britain’s Kate Elizabeth Shortman and Isabelle Anya Thorpe with 223.5084 points.
The change in the evaluation criteria should have had a positive effect on the Austrians. Among other things, more emphasis is placed on difficulty. The Alexandris showed the most difficult exercises in the technical as well as in the free program and overall the performance with the highest degree of difficulty.
More gold medals at the European Games
After climbing gold for Lukas Knapp on Friday, synchronized swimmers Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina Alexandri won their second title at the European Games on Saturday.
Victory in collective classification brings Olympic ticket
After two silver medals at the European Championships in Rome 2022 and one bronze medal at the World Championships in Budapest 2022, the Alexandris achieved their greatest success to date with two gold medals at the European Games. The reward for clearly winning the collective classification is also the only quota place for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris that is up for grabs. “The Olympics are the greatest. The goal in Paris is a medal, but we’re now focusing on the World Championships and taking one step at a time,” the duo said happily.
The last few weeks have been very, very exhausting. “We are overjoyed and relieved. We changed the whole choreography after the World Cup in France and it paid off. We took risks, but it all worked out,” said the siblings, who had already won gold in the technical freestyle with a clear lead of 18 points. Her triplet sister Vasiliki Alexandri is engaged in solo synchronized swimming. However, this will not be held in Poland.
There are now five ÖOC Olympic starters. Before the Alexandris (2021 Olympic seventh), the two swimmers Felix Auböck (two distances) and Simon Bucher managed to qualify. Martin Strempfl also secured a quota place for sport shooters by coming fourth at the European Games in the air rifle.