After two tournaments looking for its place, away from the privileged places, Spanish artistic swimming has once again dazzled at the Fukuoka World Cup. Dennis González was proclaimed world champion in the free solo modality and added the sixth medal for Spain, the third gold on Japanese soil.
The Catalan, who had already won silver in the mixed technical duet with Emma García, climbed to the top of the podium with a score of 193.0334, above the Colombian Gustavo Sánchez (189.9625) and the American Kenneth Gaudet (179.5562). González improved on the routine he developed in the preliminary phase, where he finished fourth due to a penalty.
Rubí's swimmer, trained at the Kallipolis club in Barcelona under Anna Tarrés, beat his main rivals with a less difficult exercise but with great artistic strength. He swam to the sound of the song Golden hour by JVKE, a melodic electronic music theme but with specific moments of more intensity.
González, who in 2022 was double junior world champion, free solo and technical, took advantage of the absence of the Italian Giorgio Minisini, a great favourite, and the Russian representative to make himself known to the world. The 19-year-old from Barcelona started in synchronized swimming, renamed artistic in 2017, due to the influence of his mother, a former swimmer and now coach, and also thanks to his idol Pau Ribes, the male pioneer of the specialty in Spain with his breakthrough in the 2015 World Cup in Kazan, where he teamed up with Gemma Mengual.
The young swimmer regularly trains in the CAR of Sant Cugat under the supervision of the coach Anna Vega. Now, with his two medals, especially the gold one in free solo at the premiere of the modality in a World Cup, they make him one of the great referents of Spanish artistic swimming for the future.
Spain is third in the medal table with six medals. In addition to González, Fernando Díaz del Río and the technical team won the gold. Emma García and González took the silver in the technical mixed duet and, for the moment, the bronze medals in the technical solo (Iris Tió) and in the technical duet (Iris Tió and Alisa Ozhogina) complete the Spanish medals.
Until the appointment in Fukuoka, the Spanish delegation had only achieved a maximum of seven artistic swimming medals in a single World Cup, in the 2013 edition in Barcelona, and Ona Carbonell participated in all of them. On the other hand, the only world gold so far had been achieved in 2009 in the combo mode.
