The United States artistic swimming team, which went viral earlier this week for its impressive underwater moonwalk, performed a powerful acrobatic routine on Wednesday that earned the team a silver medal. The second-place finish marks the first medal for artistic swimming since 2004.
China, always a star in artistic swimming, took gold with an incredibly dominant performance. China finished with 996.1389 points, more than 81 points ahead of the US and almost 300 points behind last place, Egypt.
The artistic swimming team competition takes place in three rounds, with teams performing three routines — a technical routine, a free routine, and an acrobatic routine — on three consecutive days. The final score is cumulative, based on all three routines.
On Monday, Team USA started off strong with a viral Michael Jackson-inspired performance of their technical routine, featuring a sequence in which they moonwalked upside down. The team performed the incredibly difficult move to the sound of Jackson’s hit single “Smooth Criminal,” finishing with the fourth-highest score of 282.7567 points.
The US then performed particularly strongly in their free routine, scoring 360.2688 points to move up to second place.
Wednesday, the third and final day, was set aside for the acrobatics competition, where teams perform tricks and jumps in the pool – a kind of cheerleading competition that is partially underwater.
The finale featured a number of creative, complex routines, including a performance to a trap remix of the “The Lion King” soundtrack (Egypt), a tribute to the Moulin Rouge (France), a routine featuring a mashup of “O Fortuna”, Eminem and some crazy guitar riffs (Spain), a routine with an alligator theme (Japan) and many more.
Spain, who were in the middle of the pack, showed a strong acrobatic performance and took an early lead with a total score of 900.731. They eventually finished in third place and took bronze.
Team USA was next to last and performed an amazing routine with the theme of “sorceresses” to finish in first place with 914.3421 total points. China then put on an incredible performance to take gold, leaving the United States very happy with silver.
The artistic swimming is not quite over yet: qualifications for the duet event take place on Friday, with the finals on Saturday. Americans Jaime Czarkowski and Megumi Field, who also competed in the team event with Team USA, will compete as a pair against a strong field of competitors.
