Svetlana Romashina and Svetlana Kolesnichenko Named Swimming World’s Artistic Swimmers of the Year
With the end of 2021 rapidly approaching, Swimming World has been handing out a variety of awards for the different aquatic disciplines. This year, because there was no way to separate their performances and impact on the sport, Russia’s Svetlana Kolesnichenko and Svetlana Romashina share Swimming World’s Artistic Swimmers of the Year honor. Here is a glimpse of what they achieved over the past year.
Svetlana Kolesnichenko/Svetlana Romashina, Russia
The Russian duo of Svetlana Kolesnichenko and Svetlana Romashina once again displayed their dominance in artistic swimming during the 2021 season. Ever since 2013, at least one or both of these swimmers have been named Swimming World’s Artistic Swimmer of the Year, except for 2014: Romashina five times and Kolesnichenko four times. The duet won the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo with a near-perfect score of 98.800. It is the third consecutive medal for the two Svetlanas. Romashina, at 31, was the oldest artistic swimmer to earn a medal—and the gold medal was her record sixth in artistic swimming. Earlier in the year, the pair won the European duet title.
In addition to their performances in the duet competition, Romashina and Kolesnichenko helped the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) to the gold medal in the team competition.