Smiles, tears, injuries and yells all turned into the joy of victory as China claimed its first ever gold medal in artistic swimming at Paris 2024 after dominating the team acrobatic on Wednesday.

Multiple world champions China took the lead in the first two routines in the team technical and team free to enjoy a 69.42-point advantage ahead of then second-placed United States.

Team China compete during the team acrobatic routine of artistic swimming at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Saint-Denis, France, Aug. 7, 2024. (Xinhua/Xia Yifang)

With the theme "Light of Life," China scored 283.6934 points in the team acrobatic for a record-high of winning total of 996.1389.

Team U.S. took the silver with 914.3421, and team Spain finished third with 900.7319. Host nation France had to settle for fourth place with 886.6487.

The team event consists of three parts - team technical, team free and team acrobatic, as the rules of artistic swimming have required since 2003.

"We lit the light of life just like our team acrobatic routine," said Feng Yu, who was a flagbearer for China at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

"It was a great encouragement that boosted our energy and enthusiasm to my whole team as artistic swimmers. We would like to show our best to our Chinese fans as well as the whole world," said the 24-year-old captain.

"The historic victory belongs to our whole team, and is the dream of all our Chinese artistic swimming for several generations. The gold medal carries more significance to us. It is the closest opportunity to touch the top podium, we really did not want to miss the boat," Feng said.

China head coach Zhang Xiaohua noted, "It was a great honor to make the history for my elder coaches, swimmers, and for our country. We kept the tradition that we learned from our veteran coaches, not only artistic coaches, but also from diving, gymnastic and trampoline. We tried to follow the new rules and new trends with all the other powerhouses in the world."

"We set a goal of trying to reach 900 points before the Games. It seemed that we underestimated ourselves. Our girls did much better job during the three team routines. We did not think about the gap with other teams. In fact, we have learned a lot from them too, during the previous World Championships and World Cups. Together we made our performance more colorful and artistic," Zhang added.

China earned its first artistic swimming medal - a bronze medal in team event - at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and moved forward with silver in the team event and bronze in the duet at London 2012. For the past two Olympic Games, China finished twice in second place.

In the World Championships, China topped the podium for the first time in the non-Olympic free combination event at Budapest 2017.

"We have made history in the team event, but now we need to calm down and start from zero in the competition of duet. We need to pay attention to our detailed techniques and the base mark," Zhang said.

The artistic swimming duet routines will take place on August 9 and 10.

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