Iris Tio Casas, a 22-year-old artistic swimmer out of Spain, cemented herself in the sport’s history by winning medals in all four of the sport’s disciplines in Singapore. She is the first athlete to do so at a World Championships.
Tio stood on the podium four times in the solo, duet, mixed duet, and team categories. Of those four podium appearances, three of them came with a gold medal around her neck.
Individually, Tio had the highest scoring Women’s Solo Free routine of 282.61, coming ahead of silver medalist Xu Huiyan. Earlier in the week, Xu had won the Women’s Solo Technical, an event where Tio came in 3rd.
Tio also scored gold in the Women’s Duet Free and Mixed Duet Free events. She and her partner Lilou Lluis had the highest artistic impression score as well as the highest overall score in the women’s competition. Then, she joined forces with trailblazer Dennis Gonzalez to score 323.86. They narrowly beat out Russian duo Aleksandr Maltsev and Olesia Platonova by .4.
Spain picked up a trio of bronze medals from the three team events: acrobatic, technical, and free, the latter two of which Tio was a part of to round out her discipline medal sweep. It was China who dominated team competition, picking up decisive golds in all three.
While Tio made headlines on the women’s side, NAB athlete Maltsev emerged as the best male performer in Singapore. Maltsev, 30, competed in his first World Championships since 2019, and he walked away with three golds. He swept the two solo categories – technical and free – with decisive wins. In the mixed technical duet, he and his partner Mayya Gurbanberdieva struck gold. With the win, they shuttered a six-year-gap since their last world’s victory in the event together.
Spain, China, and NAB accounted for 10 of the 11 possible golds in the sport, led by Tio, Xu, and Maltsev, respectively. The other country to bring home a first place was Austria. 27-year-old twins from the central European country, Anna-Maria Alexandri and Eirini-Marina Alexandri claimed victory in the women’s technical duet event. This win complemented the twins’ gold in the free duet from the 2023 Worlds in Fukuoka.
