On Wednesday, August 7, China got its first-ever gold medal in artistic swimming at the Paris Olympic Games.
Among the impressive performers were twin sisters, Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi. Born in 1997 and grew up in Shenzhen, the sisters took an interest in artistic swimming when they came to Shenzhen sports team in 2005, asking to learn artistic swimming. The twins almost didn't make it to the team because of their parents heights.
There is an unwritten rule in artistic swimming. If a sportswoman is less than 1.68 meters tall, she is unlikely to become a professional. The twins' father is less than 1.7 meters tall, while their mother is a little taller than 1.6 metres, which means the daughters are unlikely to be tall enough.
However, the twins' strong will and strengths impressed Hu, coach (教练) of Shenzhen team. She recalled that twins, who studied at Nanshan Foreign Languages School, went for training after school every day. At 20 years old, the twins grew to be 1.72 meters tall. They were among the tallest when joining the national artistic swimming team in 2017.
With good physical quality and willingness to bear hardships, through years of hard training, they became key players and got a lot of medals. In 2010, the twins won the gold medal at the provincial games. They also won a gold and a bronze medal at the national games in 2013 and 2017. Then, they won four gold medals at the 2022 World Championships in Hungary and a gold in the duet event at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, winning the right for the Paris Olympics.
