Mayuko Fujiki and the artistic swimming team, living for the Olympic Games

“Every day we count what is left for Paris. Considering this, we measured what moment we should do,” the national artistic swimming coach began. Mayuko Fujiki. “When I came back from the European Championship there were fifty days to go. Preparations are going well and it’s about constant adjustments,” he explained.

He Spanish ‘synchro’ team He experienced a cycle of returning to the front line of the elite. World champion of the technical routine in 2023 and runner-up this year, he aims to join the fight for places of honor at the Games. Also the duo, formed by Iris Tió and Alisa Ozhogina, experienced a cycle of consolidation on the front line, with several medals. The two young women gained experience in Tokyo three years ago and want to continue developing in Paris.

Less than two weeks left before the start of the Olympic Games. The national team is using these last few days to polish all the details. “We have five tasks that we need to improve in order to have less risk of ‘base-marks’,” explained Mayu. “There’s an artistic side to the free team that we’ve also influenced. We wanted to get more points in that part and we wanted to increase the difficulty of the stunts, which forced us to work more on speed and strength,” he detailed.

Three team tasks and two duo tasks. It is of little value that the results are consistent with the last competitions, with a recent European gold in technical equipment. “It’s a competition where every country thinks differently”said the coach about the recent continental event in Belgrade. “For example, Italy came with a B team, Ukraine did different things, France brought the Olympic team… We considered it as a final part of the preparation, thinking about the Games ,” he says.

Games where the team tries to hide every last detail until the end. If Spain has gained one thing during this cycle, it is the confidence of knowing that it can compete with the best. “I enjoyed Doha, but you are never completely satisfied. Especially a team like us that competes in so many tasks,” Mayu said of the last big test, at the World Championships in February.

Here, Spain, in addition to its silver in the technical team, was fourth in the free team and fifth in the acrobatic team. The three events were combined into a single event with medals in Paris. “In some exercises you become happy and in others you do it with more anger. But Overall it was a championship that helped us gain motivation looking forward to the coming season,” explains the Japanese technique.

What’s to come is the highest breakdown for the eight starting girls on the team. It will be extra for Iris Tió and Alisa Ozhoginarecent world bronze medalists in the technical duet and fourth in the free duet, in a championship without Japan in the match. “They will do five tasks in a row. There are days when we finish early in the morning and it will be very difficult,” he said. The preparations to arrive safely in Paris are measured in detail, especially in the case of the two of them. “Physical appearance is very important, but they are two very professional girls.. They rest every moment they can. Their experience from Tokyo is important. We took that step well,” he said.

The move is to promote the transmission of drawings to the two of them so that they can swim as a duo already in Tokyo, gain experience and live this journey to Paris knowing what they are facing. The results are good so far and Spain has achieved the first major objective of arriving in Paris with possibilities, well aware of the new regulations and with a clear strategy to improve its artistic impression to measure what to risk in each exercise.

An additional effort task: the daily routine

Any mistake will pay dearly in the Games. The choice is clear. For example, in the group test. “You need to change your thinking a lot, because everything is important. It’s very important to compete as much as possible on the first day with the technical team so that everyone can go out the next day and finish the acrobatics as much as possible,” Fujiki explained. “If something happens on the first day, it’s hard to get up”warning

This forced us to vary parts of the preparation. The World Championships and the European Championships have the particularity that each routine is evaluated separately, in different tests. Each has its own medal. In the Games, as always, this will not be the case. Duo routines, on the one hand, and team routines, on the other hand, are counted in the joint classification in each modality. Failure in one of the exercises, even if you nail the rest of that discipline, will take away the dream of competing for medals. “We need to work more than think”Mayu recognizes what is changing in this situation. “But we have experience in Fukuoka and Doha to rise after difficult times”warning

There is also another focus that the coaching staff has focused on in recent months to maximize performance. “We changed the training sessions to find the best time to train”, Fujiki explained. This is not a coincidence. “In acrobatics we need speed and frequency, for example, and we try to get them. We also consider that the competition in Paris starts every day at 7:30 pmso we trained at that time,” he says.

Despite the proximity to France, everything is influential. “There are no time changes like in Tokyo, but we have adjusted the body to give most of the competition times,” he detailed. This is not a small topic. “This is something remarkable. At 7:30 pm you need to be at the highest level. It’s not like your head is in other parts of your daily life, you have to get used to it”, account. “We adapt better than the Japanese schedule, but it’s always difficult,” explained Mayu.

Everything is important to fight to end the dream cycle. “We want to think about doing things as best we can. With these new regulations there are things we cannot control on the day of the competition and that will decide the classification,” the coach warned. “But What is important is that we perform all tasks in the best possible way”, he warned.

Spain gets the right to fight something big in Paris for three years. The most desirable moment is approaching. Mayuko Fujiki is convinced that, beyond the results, can offer a high level in the French pool. That is the great goal. Since the Spanish artistic swimming team adapted like few others to the new regulations, it gained the necessary maturity during the cycle and focused everything on the big event, even with changes in its daily life: The girls literally live for the Olympic Games for months.