BUDAPEST, June 17 (Xinhua) -- The 19th FINA World Championships began with artistic swimming, the most spectacular program, and China's Wang sisters won the preliminaries in the Hajos Alfred Swimming Complex on Margaret Island.
In the women's Duet Technical event, the Chinese pair Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi, 25-year-old twins, took the first place in preliminaries as they scored 92.6378 points (execution 27.9000, impression 28.0000, elements 36.7378).
The Wang twins are the favorites of the event, as they won the gold medal for the women's Team Free Combination five years ago at the 17th FINA World Championships in Budapest in 2017.
"We haven't reviewed the video yet, but I'm feeling really good today," the elder sister Wang Liuyi told Xinhua after their performance.
"We had good preparation and delivered a good performance. I'm pretty satisfied with the show," she added.
Wang Liuyi also said that their goal for the World Championships was to defeat themselves: "We believe the only opponents are ourselves."
"We went into our competing form very quickly," younger sister Wang Qianyi explained.
"We were here once in the 2017 World Championships and everything seems familiar to us," she recalled.
"We are the first Chinese athletes to compete in this championship and we did a good job today," she summed up, hoping that they made a good start for the Chinese team.
More than 340 artistic swimmers from 44 countries and regions came to the Hungarian capital.
On Saturday, artistic swimming will continue with the preliminaries for Free Combination event in the morning, with the Mixed Duet Technical event early afternoon and the final for the Solo Technical event. ■
