A Greek athlete, Evangelia Platanioti, won gold in artistic swimming on Saturday at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha (Feb. 2-18).
Platanioti, 29, came in first with a total of 272.9633 points in the finals of the solo artistic swimming category, followed by Jacqueline Simoneau of Canada (269.2767) and Huiyan Xu of China (262.3700).
She had scored first at Friday’s preliminaries, besting that appearance by nearly 3 points. Another athlete of Greek descent, Vassiliki Alexandri, who competed under Austrian colors and is one of the top athletes in the sport, came in 6th after an error.
Platanioti has won two out of the three medals Greece has received in artistic swimming: two bronze medals in Budapest in 2022. It is the 5th gold for Greece in aquatic competitions and the first after 2013, when Spyros Gianniotis won gold for the 10-km open-water race in the World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona.
In a social media post on X (former Twitter), Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis congratulated the athlete, adding, “Evangelia, you’ve made us all proud!”
SOURCE; ANA-MPA
