Golden Hopes: what results will the World Water Championship bring?

The World Aquatics Championships started in Singapore on July 11 with a water polo tournament, where athletes with a Russian passport are not allowed, but on the 15th, the part of the World Cup program begins, where "neutrals" will participate - synchronized and sports swimming, open water swimming and diving. Of course, the main attention should be paid to synchronized swimmers and swimmers, it is there that the NAB (Neutral Athletes B) team, which is how holders of Russian citizenship are designated, should expect major successes.

Synchronized swimming

There are 13 girls and Alexander Maltsev in our application. The latter will perform solo plus in mixed duets. Synchronized swimming taught me to win, but that was before the pause in international competitions. Now the situation has changed in a complex way — there has been a rotation of the team, the rules of judging have changed, plus it is not clear to the end how subjective the judges will be, and synchronisation is a kind that still allows you to vary the assessment, no matter how the international federation struggles with it.

"There is a medal plan, but I won't tell you about it," said Olga Brusnikina, synchronized swimmer and vice president of the Aquatics Federation, in a conversation with Izvestia. — I will say that we are going, of course, with the expectation of medals, but also with some caution and interest. In the three years that we have been gone, new Olympic and world champions have appeared. Therefore, it is not known how the judges will react to us, how they will evaluate us, I hope that everything will be fine. A lot of things have changed during our absence, in fact, the sport itself and its rules have changed. At the Russian competitions, we did everything necessary to adapt to these changes. And it seems to me that the quality of the programs of Russian synchronized swimmers has not decreased. At the World Championships, we will try to confirm the high level of Russian synchronized swimming.

We can only say with confidence that Maya Doroshko and Tatiana Gaidai have already won duets at international competitions this season. The chances of the others will become clear as the championship progresses.

Swimming

The situation here is no less tense — after the very successful World Short Course Championships in Budapest, athletes are expected to repeat the gold awards, but the World Cup in Singapore is a completely different level of competition. Many people did not come to Hungary for a short break in December, and almost all the strongest will be in Singapore.

Evgenia Chikunova looks the most confident at the moment, if you look at the results of the season. For Miron Lifintsev, this World Cup, like the December one, will be his debut, then he coped, but now the task is more difficult, and the expectations are higher. The other names are also well known — Borodin, Kolesnikov, Kornev, Minakov, Prigoda, Samusenko. You can expect success from each of them, the good thing is that there are a lot of "neutrals" coming from Russia and it is unlikely that they will all fail at once. However, it's probably not worth counting on everyone to do everything in the best possible way. The chances in the relay races are very good, simply due to the fact that not so many countries are able to assemble a strong squad. The circle of those who compete for medals is always noticeably narrower there than in the individual competition.

"Everyone understands that Russia is one of the key countries in water sports"

Olga Brusnikina, synchronized swimmer and Vice-President of the FVVSR, talks about the upcoming World Cup in Singapore

Diving

Unfortunately, the situation is the least favorable here. Yes, Yulia Timoshinina, Kristina Ilinykh, Alexander Bondar and Nikita Schleicher are in the squad, but they will face the Chinese national team, which has not given the palm at the world championships for years.

Will there be medals?

There will be, and most likely, gold ones among them. But it's probably better not to count how many samples or what kind. Firstly, it's a bad omen to hang awards around athletes' necks even before the start. And secondly, we should not forget that this World Cup is actually the restart of an international career for all Russian athletes. Everything that happened before, even the short Budapest water, no longer counts. The World Cup on the "big" water is the main start after the Olympics. The challenge, which for the same Lifintseva will be the first in his career.

In any case, the whole second half of July and the beginning of August will give a reason to hope for success, wait for it, rejoice at medals and be saddened by defeats. Even this had to be waited for several years, and the participation of our neutral athletes is already a reason to follow the events in Singapore, despite the serious time difference.