Spain's Iris Tio Casas, Lilou Lluis Valette win historic duet free title at World Aquatics C'ships

Straits Times

3 days ago

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SINGAPORE – Standing in front of the media at the mixed zone with their gold medals gleaming around their necks, Iris Tio Casas and Lilou Lluis Valette were beaming, yet at a loss for words as the scale of their achievement had yet to sink in.
Moments earlier on July 24, the Spanish artistic swimmers had made history by clinching their country's first duet gold at the World Aquatics Championships (WCH) after claiming the women's duet free title.
Their score of 282.6087 at the WCH Arena secured the top spot ahead of Italy's Enrica Piccoli and Lucrezia Ruggiero (278.7137) and Russians Mayya Doroshko and Tatiana Gayday (277.1117), who are competing as neutral athletes.
What made the triumph even more remarkable was the fact that Tio and Lluis began partnering only in 2025.
Despite their short time together, the duo had already claimed silver at the European championships in June and now, a world title.
Tio said: 'We didn't expect it because it's our first year, but we have really good chemistry and we enjoy doing this duet a lot.'
They had come into the meet without any medal targets and for 18-year-old Lluis, who also claimed the team technical bronze in Singapore, the goal was simple.
She said: 'We just wanted to enjoy ourselves and do our best.'
Their best was certainly enough as Tio had also made history for Spain two days earlier with her solo free triumph.
The 22-year-old also bagged bronzes in the solo technical, team technical and team free events in Singapore.
She said: 'I have no words, it's super special. I don't know.
'I had a super good feeling before swimming the duet.
'I'm super happy because we worked a lot this season and it's getting the results.'
With the win, Spain are now third overall in the artistic swimming medal table, with two golds, two silvers and three bronzes, behind China (3-3-0) and neutral athletes from Russia (3-1-2).
Both Tio and Lluis, who were also part of the team who clinched bronze at the Paris Olympics, credited much of their success to national coach Andrea Fuentes, a former world and Olympic medallist who returned to her native Spain after leading the United States to team silver at the same Games.
Tio, who once looked up to Fuentes as a role model, is now happy to call her a mentor.
She said: 'She's brought a lot of positivity and confidence in us and also creating super good choreography that we feel comfortable swimming and is very artistic.
'We find (her routines have) really good balance between artistic and difficulty. She's the best coach ever.'
Meanwhile, Singapore wrapped up their artistic swimming campaign with a 22nd-place finish among 25 in the team acrobatic event, scoring 137.0708 points in the preliminary round. China led the qualifiers with 225.7993, followed by Spain (224.2870) and Italy (215.7280).
While the Republic did not advance to the final in any of the six events they contested, there were bright spots.
Duet pair Debbie Soh and Yvette Chong recorded personal bests in both the women's duet free (222.6152) and technical (243.6826) routines. They narrowly missed qualifying for the 12-team final in the duet free, finishing 14th overall.
Rachel Thean also achieved a personal best of 201.2638 in the women's solo free, where she placed 16th. The experience was a valuable one, as the team gear up for the SEA Games in Thailand this December.
'It was especially good because when we train with the better teams, we can watch them underwater and pick up techniques that maybe weren't taught to us before,' said Soh.
'We can then use those techniques in our own training.'
For Thean, the exposure to world-class competition was an eye-opening opportunity.
She said: 'It's important to see how other teams prepare for competition.
'The three music practice days before the event are where you really see the action. You can observe their warmup routines, strength and conditioning and how they get into the zone.
'Even during the competition, you learn about their pre-competition rituals, how they bring everyone into the right mindset and how they manage to reset themselves if they've had a bad result.'