Canada's Claudia Holzner and Jacqueline Simoneau perform their women's duet free routine during the artistic swimming finals at the Tokyo Olympics on Wednesday August 4, 2021.MARKO DJURICA/Reuters
Canadian artistic swimmers Claudia Holzner and Jacqueline Simoneau once again delivered their best performance ever in their duet free routine Wednesday night at the Tokyo Olympics, good enough for fifth in the competition.
Their free routine, inspired by Japanese culture, earned them 93.0000 points. When they saw their score from the edge of the pool, Calgary’s Holzner and Simoneau from St-Laurent, Que., jumped for joy.
Combined with their technical routine the day before, also a record performance, they totalled 184.4798 points. They were in first place with five pairs of swimmers to go.
The duo from the Russian Olympic Committee, Svetlana Kolesnichenko and Svetlana Romashina, were first after the technical routine the day before and won gold with 195.9079 points.
China’s Huang Xuechen and Sun Wenyan won silver ahead of Ukrainians Marta Fiedina and Anastasiya Savchuk.
Japan’s Yukiko Inui and Megumu Yoshida edged the Canadians for fourth place.
Partners since 2017, Holzner and Simoneau won gold at the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series in Budapest and at the Super Final in Barcelona this year. They also won artistic swimming duet and team gold medals at the 2019 Pan Am Games.
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