Chinese twin artistic swimmers aim for Olympic gold as a dynamic duo

Twin sisters Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi from Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, will join forces to compete in the artistic swimming event at the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, aiming to stand atop the podium together.

They joined the Chinese national team in 2017, demonstrating promising potential as a pair, and have since continuously enhanced their performances. If everything had gone well, they would have participated in the delayed Tokyo Olympics together in 2021. However, Wang Liuyi had to exit the national team due to injury in 2019. Wang Qianyi stayed and helped the team secure silver. Huang Xuechen and Sun Wenyan represented China in the duet event and also finished as runners-up.

Having experienced the honor of performing on behalf of her country on the Olympic stage, Wang Qianyi said she is more determined to pair with her sister in the duet event.

"Sis, you and I must stand on the Olympic podium together," Wang Qianyi told Wang Liuyi. "I think that's what matters the most in life. Let's put everything else aside."

Though the twins didn't work together for two years, they soon regained their coordination and won gold medals in both the duet technical and duet free routines at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

Nonetheless, Wang Liuyi and Wang Qianyi failed to repeat their success at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. They were the silver medalists in the duet free and finished in fourth place in the duet technical.

"The result made me realize that I would go through ups and downs," Wang Qianyi told the China Media Group (CMG). "It made me accept that I need to leave myself space for adjustment."

"Now that I look back at what happened in Fukuoka, I see how nervous I was," Wang Liuyi said. "I wanted to win too much and was afraid to lose too much. That affected my performance."

The setbacks didn't break the twins down. Instead, they have been putting their work under microscope and working hard to fix every problem with a better mindset. Now, they are ready for Paris.

"We have a good opportunity to move higher on the podium this time in Paris," Wang Qianyi told CMG. "So we made more efforts and, hopefully, can do our best in exploiting the opportunity."