“We started the road to Paris eight years ago with a lot of hope and we want to present the best”
BARCELONA, 5 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish artistic swimming coach, Mayuko Fujiki, assured that the Spanish team is once again among the elite of the specialty after winning gold again at the Fukuoka 2023 World Cup and consolidating its medals in Doha 2024, so they arrive to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with “a lot of hope” and desire to present “the best” to qualify for the Olympic medals.
“I think we are already in the elite, we have won a gold medal in Fukuoka and as teams we are, as always, fighting at a very ‘top’ point. These girls are working very well and they are all very elite. And it is true that you can be one competition up and another down, but I think that in the last two years we presented something very strong,” he told Europa Press at the ‘Media Day’ organized by the RFEN at the CAR in Sant Cugat (Barcelona). .
In attention to the media, he assured that with this new regulation you can opt for gold in Paris. “It may be that we win gold, but other countries also have many opportunities. It may be that a team that was eighth last year wins a gold medal, so we all go more with our doors open. You can be up or down, but it is a moment very exciting, and we continue to look up,” he acknowledged.
“I think we have competed very well in both Fukuoka and Doha, and we have won medals. We started this path to Paris eight years ago, with a lot of hope, and we want to present the best possible. Half of the team already has experience of the Games, in Tokyo, and the four young women are very excited to go to Paris, so it is a very nice point. “We are very proud of the routine that we are going to present,” said the Japanese woman.
Regarding this new regulation, marked by technical difficulty and the ‘base mark’ that can cause a very difficult exercise to truncate the score if certain figures are failed, he believes that it allows a team with less quality to climb if it exceeds the key points of difficulty, and vice versa.
“Even if the swimmers do not have this level, they can fight for the maximum difficulty and it can be a lot of risk but it can also work. Some teams have done it this way. We have made some decisions and we want to do everything very well and with all difficulty, but we do not take any risks. So I think that each country has taken a different path, but we thought, when this regulation came out, where we would go and so far we have competed well,” she stated.
As for the ‘base mark’ judges and controllers, it was clear; They don’t want to focus on what they can’t control. “There are some things that we cannot control, not only the judges but the controllers who will monitor all the movements and ‘base mark’. It’s almost more important than the judges now, because this can create a very big fall for us with whatever they decide between three (whether ‘base mark’ is committed or not). We have to prepare as best as possible to compete as well as possible even though there are things that we cannot control,” she added.
“It is a very important thing for me, as coach of the Spanish team, that we have had our own color for many years and that we want to present something very different from other teams. With an artistic and music very different from that of other countries. So it was very important to prepare something special for Paris, so we have changed quite a few things since the last World Cup,” she revealed.
Without being able to give too many details, he commented that the new free duet will be about the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, touching on a topic that is “very important.” “We also want to present something about Spain that is not just flamenco. We are here in Barcelona, training every day, and even though I am Japanese we can take that energy. The completion of the Sagrada Familia will be a very important moment for Spain and we want to present ourselves with this,” he argued.