Israel's artistic swimming duet opened the European Aquatics Championships in Paris with its best kind of statement: a routine with nothing to correct. Katy Konin and Aya Mazor finished 10th in the women's technical duet final on Friday, scoring 260.6284 points in a routine that ONE described as executed cleanly, without penalties or falls, despite carrying genuinely difficult elements.
The result placed the Israeli pair ahead of Georgia, Switzerland, Turkey and Bulgaria in a 19-nation field, with the gold going to Greece's Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina Alexandri (311.4308), ahead of a Russian-flagged neutral-athletes duet and Great Britain's Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe.
Konin, who swims for Hapoel Jerusalem, and Mazor, of Elah Matzeret Batya, were not done for the day. In the free duet preliminaries they scored 245.0557 points for 11th place, enough to book their spot in Saturday evening's free duet final — a second final in two events on the opening day of the meet.
ONE noted it marked the first time the duo had put together a fully clean technical routine at this level, landing the higher-difficulty elements without the deductions that have cost Israeli swimmers in the past. That kind of execution is what separates mid-table finishes from the medal contenders in a sport where difficulty scores mean little if the judges spot a wobble.
The championships opened Friday at the Olympic Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis, the venue built for the 2024 Paris Games, and run through August 16 across swimming, diving, water polo, open water and artistic swimming disciplines, with 22 member federations sending artistic swimmers to compete for 11 European titles.
Israeli artistic swimming has been building toward moments like this. Shelly Bobritsky and Ariel Nassee delivered the country's best-ever Olympic finish in the discipline, 11th in the duet at Paris 2024, and Konin and Mazor themselves were part of the Israeli team that reached the free routine final at the 2023 European Games. A top-10 continental finish for the newer pairing suggests that depth is not a one-off.
Saturday's free duet final will be the next test, against a field that includes several of the same technical-final rivals Israel has just outscored. For now, though, the clean sheet in the technical routine is the headline: no falls, no penalties, and a climb past half the continent's artistic swimming powers on the opening day in Paris.
