Aiming to secure without further ado the ticket to the Olympic Games, Evangelia Plataniotis and Sofia Malkogeorgou compete tomorrow (8/2, 13:00) in the final of the duet’s free program, as part of the World Aquatic Championships in Doha .
The Greek duo, after the eighth place they occupied in the technical program, need to gain places and overcome in total (that is, the sum of the scores of the two competitions) one of the three countries that have not qualified or cannot qualify from the team , namely Great Britain, the Netherlands and Israel.
If they succeed, they will be able to… sleep easy, otherwise they will have to wait for the free team final on Friday 9/2 to find out if they will be able to get the ticket to Paris.
Here it should be noted that, although in theory the extra qualifiers from the duet are three, in practice up to five can be made. That will happen if the USA and Japan, who have qualified for the Olympics in the duet through the continental events, qualify from Doha in the team event.
Because the countries that take part in the Olympics in the team, automatically secure a presence in the duet as well, they effectively “vacate” two additional places, which will be filled by the runners-up pairs. In all of the above, China (which has guaranteed qualification in both events of artistic swimming), Spain, Canada and Italy, which claim two qualifications, are not counted.
Plataniotis/Malkogeorgos passed with the sixth performance from the preliminary of the free duet, but this now matters very little, since, with the new scoring system, one mistake can be damning. The difficulty coefficient of the program chosen by each pair is very important, as the higher it is, the higher the probability of a high score (even with a relatively average execution), but the higher the probability of error…
Earlier tomorrow, at 8:30 am, the qualifier in the free team program will be held, with the participation of 16 countries. The Greek team, with Maria-Elli Alzigouzi-Kominea, Thalia Dambali, Zoi Karangelou, Maria Karapanagiotou, Danae Karioris, Ifigenia Krommydakis, Sofia Malkogeorgou and Sofia Rigakou, will aim to put on a good performance and entertain the impressions of the poor attendance in the other two programs (acrobatic and technical), which deprived her of any possibility of claiming qualification for the Olympic Games.
In the women’s pool, the A’ phase ends tomorrow, with the national team facing China at 19:30. The representative group must immediately put behind them the bad performance and the “heavy” defeat against Spain and get the victory in order to secure the second place in the B group. If they succeed, the Greek team will play a cross game against weak Kazakhstan on Saturday (10/2) and will then play in the quarter-finals against the winner of Group 4, which will result from tomorrow’s match between Italy and Canada . Otherwise, if the “blue and white” are defeated by the Asian champions, they will finish third in the group and play a knockout game with the title holder Holland.
China achieved their first goal in Doha as they defeated France on penalties and effectively secured their place in the second round. The bar is higher and the Asian team knows that, to have any hope of achieving it, they have to overcome Greece. The two teams have met three times in World Championships, with the first – in time – and most important being the 2011 final, when the national team won 9-8 in Shanghai and won the trophy.
This was followed by a defeat of the Greek team on penalties in 2015 in Kazan (in a qualifying match) and a relatively easy victory (12-8) in a knockout crossover match in 2019 in Guangzhou. The most recent meeting between the two teams was last April in Vari, as part of the World Cup qualifiers, where the national team prevailed 13-11. At that time, Haris Pavlidis was on the China bench, along with Orestis Salachas and Costas Hatzidakis, who have now left.
The full schedule for Day 7 at the Doha World Aquatics Championships:
ARTISTIC SWIMMING
08:30 Team – free program (qualifier) – National team –
13:00 Duet C – free program (FINAL) – Plataniotis/Malkogeorgou –
DIVING
09:00 3m. C (Qualifier)
17:30 10m. synchronized A (FINAL)
OPEN SEA SWIMMING
09:30 Mixed Team 6km. (4 X 1,500m.)
HYDRATION OF WOMEN
08:00 Singapore-New Zealand (Group 3)
09:30 South Africa-Great Britain (Group D)
11:00 Italy-Canada (Group D)
12:30 Hungary-Australia (Group 3)
15:00 Brazil-Netherlands (Group A)
16:30 USA-Kazakhstan (Group A)
18:00 Spain-France (Group B)
19:30 GREECE-China (Group B)
Source: RES-MPE