Athletistic/ Others. Four-time synchronized swimming world champion Oleksandr Maltsev believes that the Ukrainian duo of synchronized swimmers’ silver at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships was undeserved.

“The Ukrainian team received an award for making the grossest mistakes, in my opinion. But everyone turned a blind eye to this. In addition, there were a large number of political topics at the tournament that he is generally forbidden to use, but this time everything was actively promoted. If you look at the performance of the women’s pair in the technical program, it is easy to see that one of the athletes at the end forgot about the peloton and did completely different moves,” Maltsev said.

The Russian added that in his opinion, the scores of the Ukrainian synchronized swimmers were given as if the judges knew in advance what to put, and that any other team instead of the Ukrainian team with such spots would have ended up without medals.

Ukraine’s Marina and Vladislava Alekseeva won silver medals in the duet free and technical programs. Russian athletes missed the World Cup, because. in March, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) suspended swimmers from Russia and Belarus due to the political situation in Ukraine.