‘Artistic Swim Goddess’ Heo Yun-seo 허윤서 (17, Apgujeong-go, South Korea) made a surprise fourth place finish in the women’s solo free preliminaries at the World Aquatics Championships.
He finished fourth overall with a score of 185.9500 in the Artistic Swimming Solo Free Qualification at the Aqua 2023 Fukuoka World Aquatics Championships on Sunday (July 17) at Fukuoka Marine Messe Fukuoka Hall in Fukuoka, Japan. Home favorite Yukiko Inui, 32, topped the heats with 253.1853 points, followed by Kate Shortman, 21, Great Britain-213.8417, and Evangelia Platanaoti, 28, Greece-199.4834. A confident performance amongst her more experienced senior sisters was enough to secure a top-four finish.
He, who reached her first final in the women’s duet technical at last year’s World Championships in Budapest, where she finished 12th, showed off the dazzling skills she has been honing in her first senior solo World Championships.
After a disappointing 13th-place finish in the duet technical, she was unable to qualify, but her solo performance was nothing short of spectacular, ranking fourth in her career.
She will compete in the Women’s Solo Free Final at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, where she will attempt to become the first Korean artistic swimmer to win a medal at the World Championships. Heo Yun-seo’s path is one of history for artistic swimming. After becoming the first duet finalist since World Aquatics introduced the current scoring system in 2013, Heo made her first final in the solo free last year.
Heo Yun-seo, who took up artistic swimming in the first grade of elementary school, is a self-proclaimed “tick-tock” athlete who has successfully balanced her studies and athletics. In 2019, she was selected as a JS Foundation Scholar by soccer legend Park Ji-sung, and in 2021, she was named one of the 20 New Stars by the Korea Sports Council. Last year, he won the 14th Sogang Sports Award and the 32nd Yoon Gok Kimyung Sports Award for Rookie of the Year. She also missed the pre-departure press conference for the Fukuoka World Championships because she had to go to class, so she gives 200% to everything she does, whether it’s studying or athletics.
He first made a name for herself four years ago in 2019 when she placed fifth in the world in the solo event at the Artistic Swimming Youth World Championships in Slovakia, her first competition as a senior. He was praised for his powerful performance and charismatic facial expressions beyond his young age, and it was reported that the audience was stunned by the achievement of the ’14-year-old unknown Korean athlete’ and asked, “Who is that?”. In an interview at the time, she responded to being labeled “Kim Yeon-ah of Artistic Swim” by saying, “Just as Kim Yeon-ah made many people interested in figure skating, it would be great if my beloved sport of Artistic Swim could be known by many people.” She kept her promise on the senior stage. In July 2023, the name He Yunxue was introduced to the world of artistic swimming, and fans were eagerly awaiting her arrival. 온라인카지노