Chinese synchronized swimmers Huang Xuechen and Sun Wenyan won gold medal in the first synchronized swimming event of the Incheon Asian Games on Saturday afternoon at the Munhak Park Tae-hwan Aquatics Center.

Huang and Sun were in the lead at the conclusion of the technical routine Saturday morning with 91.1851 points, followed by Japanese duets Yukiko Inui and Risako Mitsui.

In the afternoon session, they used the music of Butterfly Lovers, a violin concerto adopted on a Chinese folk story. Huang said that after an energetic performance in the morning, they wanted to show different sides of their abilities.

"We are also quite good in slow movements. And this well-known story of Butterfly Lover is easier to bring out our artistic performance," Huang said.

Despite some small mistakes, they maintained their advantage in the afternoon by achieving 94 points in the free routine. As in the morning, the Chinese achieved the highest scores in all the three categories of execution, artistic impression and difficulty.

The Chinese pair had a total score of 185.1851 points, leading second-placed Japan by 3.6463 points.

Huang and Sun, who just started to partner in the duets since the beginning of this year, are regarded as the new hope for China to continue its dominance in this event in Asia since twin sisters Jiang Wenwen and Jiang Tingting retired last year.

Though pairing for just half a year, Huang and Sun are confident that they could achieve good synchronization as they were friends since in the national youth team.

Sun used to compete in single's event but both have been swimmers of the team events, giving them confidence to deliver a good performance.

"Comparing to my old partner Liu Ou, Sun is at the same age. It's easier for us to find agreement," Huang said.

The Japanese duo are also new in their partnership. Inui and Mitsui started to practice together as a duet since January.

"I wish they had had more time to practice. But they have my blessing. It's not so easy to find tall girls and even harder to find two tall girls without much height difference to play synchronized swimming," said Japanese coach Masako Kaneko.

Young twin sisters from Kazakhstan also shone in Saturday's event. When asked about another twin from China, the Jiang sisters, Yekaterina and Alexandra Nemich said they have met them at previous competitions.

"We are only nineteen. We hope to be the future of synchronized swimming for Kazakhstan, just like they were for China," the Nemich sisters said.

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