Artistic swimming duo Bobritsky and President in final preparation for Paris: “Always aiming for the podium”

The European Artistic Swimming Championships will start tomorrow (Monday) in Belgrade, Serbia. For the Israeli duo, Shelly Bobritsky and Ariel Nashi, this is the last major competition before the Olympic Games in Paris.

“For us, the European Championship is like another preparation for the Olympic Games, our thoughts and efforts are towards Paris,” Bobritsky says in a special interview of the duo to ‘Davar’. “The importance of this competition is to show the judges once again a high level of difficulty and to meet it. Basically to stabilize the ranking, shape the scores and raise them as much as possible.”

At the previous European Championship held in Rome in 2022, Nasi and Bobritzky finished a successful championship with sixth place in the free duet final and sixth place in the technical duet final. Two years have passed since then and the feeling that the Israeli duo has only gotten better and better. “We still don’t know which countries are going to participate, because it’s right next to the Olympics,” says the president. “But we always aim for the podium and a medal.”

The main goal of the Israeli duo is to arrive in top shape for the most important sporting event in their careers, the Olympics in Paris. The road there was not easy and full of ups and downs, until Bobritzky and Nassi won in Quetta (the Olympic criterion) at the World Championship held in February in Doha, Qatar.

“To voice the ‘hope’ is the most one can do”

The outbreak of the war and the events of October 7 had a great impact on Bobritsky and Nassi, who had to continue training for the World Championships in Doha alongside worrying about their friends who are serving in the IDF. “It’s not easy, we’re 20-22 years old, many of our friends are fighting in Gaza,” she says President. “We don’t always know what’s going on with them. At first it was hard for me to train and feel that you are not really contributing, when everyone is there at the front and you are supposedly protected. Over time I began to understand that this is really my contribution to represent the country around the world, to voice the ‘Hope’. It’s really the most I can do.”

“Only after I realized this, I could wake up a little myself. This is the biggest contribution I can make,” adds Nasi. “But it’s not easy to come and train in the pool. At the beginning of the war there were alarms and booms. We have our heads under water and there were thoughts of what if suddenly we don’t hear the alarm?”

Bobritsky adds about the difficult period: “In the first months that it just started, there was a great deal of uncertainty in the country in terms of the war and also what was happening with us in terms of the criterion. Will we even have the possibility to fly to the competition in Doha. Lots of question marks and amid this uncertainty we have to be at our maximum, Entering the pool, disconnecting our emotions and reaching our peak performance was very difficult to make this separation.”

“People we know are injured and, unfortunately, also killed. It was very difficult to continue training amid this, but as Ariel said when the token fell that everyone has a role in this period and that if we don’t come and compete on the international stage, then no one will do it in our place.” , Bobritsky adds. “We are there to put Israel on the map and say that we are not going anywhere. We have nothing to apologize for, we are a strong country, we work hard, we have our backs, we have a strong people and that is why we are really not going anywhere.”

“Right there, setting a criterion against all odds, it was exciting”

The days and weeks before the World Championships in Qatar were nerve-wracking, when it was still unclear whether the Shin Bet would allow the Israeli athletes to go to an Arab country during these tense days.

“Until the last minute, we didn’t know who we were going out with,” says Nasiya. “Every time we were told yes and then no. And it’s not just a competition in the round. This is really the most important competition we’ve had, the competition that will determine whether we enter the Olympics or not. It’s not easy to compete in a hostile country, when we’re constantly surrounded by security. We can’t To put on our uniforms like the other countries, we go on stage and shout things about Israel. It was exciting to set a criterion there, so to speak.”

Were you afraid to go there?
Bobritzky: “Obviously there was apprehension. Our state of mind was that even though we didn’t know if we would fly, the preparations and training were that we would be there. I mean, in our heads we only ran one scenario in our heads that we fly and achieve a criterion. There were no other things.”

“Right up until a week ago, no one told us that it would happen for sure. We were given the OK to go, so we understood that it was possible and it was going to happen,” Bobritsky adds. “It made us worried, but we knew that no one would let us get hurt. That is, no one would put us at risk, and if there is an OK for this trip, it means check and everyone knows what to do in this situation. The conduct there was very clear and orderly and it went smoothly.”

How did it feel to be in Doha at such a time?
Bobritzky: “There was heavy security, different from our other competitions, but in the end it didn’t matter what was allowed and what wasn’t allowed for us. In the end we managed to get to the pool and we managed to bring our best performance and accomplish the goal for which we gathered.”

Nasi and Bobritzky came to the competition with the natural podium candidates blowing behind their backs. They had a great start to the competition, when they finished in 5th place in the technical exercise, a significant improvement from the previous championship in 2023 where they finished in 12th place in the exercise. Expectations rose to the sky and there was a feeling that it was possible to surprise and win a medal, following the high ability they showed at the World Championship in 2023 in the free exercise where they finished in 4th place. But things didn’t come together the way they wanted and they only finished in 9th place in the free exercise.

“In Qatar, we had an option for a medal. We had a chance. We came very imbued with a goal,” admits Nashii and Bobritsky continues, “We arrived with the highest level of difficulty among the contestants in the short dance. We knew we had a chance, we came really excited for it.”

Nashi sums up the disappointment, with optimism for the future: “In the end it didn’t happen, it hurt us terribly. But in the end we took it to a positive place that we have a little more to show in the next competitions and we tried not to let it break us, but it was very painful.”

In the dry rules of the competition, only three quotas were supposed to be distributed to Paris, the Israeli duo finished in fourth place among the teams that did not get the ticket before the World Championship. Despite this, according to the more advanced calculations and the regulations for how the criterion is distributed, they were still supposed to receive the official notification that they had won a ticket to Paris on the same day, but following the discovery of internal discrepancies within the regulations, the notification was delayed for four nerve-wracking days.

“Our coach did the calculations and we, so to speak, already knew when we were in Qatar that we had made the criterion. But in the end, until it’s over, it’s not over and there’s always this doubt and in this whole situation there were many question marks as to why they don’t publish already,” she says Bobritzky on the moments of drama. “In the end, the tracking was not because of us, but there was a complication between two countries that would not touch who should write first.”

At the end of the competition, six tickets were finally distributed and not three as it should have been before the competition began. “We’ve been inside since the competition ended, but there were four days of anticipation that had nothing to do with us,” Bobritsky adds. “Of course it was nerve-wracking. Because we knew we were in, but we didn’t know we were in. As soon as the announcement came out, it was a crazy relief. We were very, very happy. They brought us back to Israel on the very day of the competition. So we celebrated it with the family.”

“I loved the legs that came out of the water”

Bobritsky (22) grew up in Rehovot, her special connection to water she says she started at the age of seven months in a swimming class for babies. At the age of four and a half, her swimming training moved to another pool and there she was first exposed to artistic swimming. “As a child, I was very excited about my legs coming out of the water and I asked my mother to look for where I could practice this thing. This is my 18th year in the sport, ninth year as a member of the Israeli national team. When I was in normal swimming and also in the first years of artistic swimming, I was in artistic gymnastics and ballet.”

Bobritzky, for whom this will be the second Olympics in her career, is considered the more experienced of the two, with Olympic experience in Tokyo 2020 in which she participated with Aden Belcher. “It was a crazy experience, I think that the very fact that we got there was a victory for both of us. The preparation period before the criterium competition were the two hardest years of my life, both physically and mentally. The fact that everything was drained into the criterium competition and the Olympic Games was crazy, including all the atmosphere and the competition and the atmosphere Among all the athletes, this is something really special that is not found in any other competition and it completely whetted my appetite for another Olympic round.”

The other half of the national duo, Ariel Nashi (19) from Jerusalem, comes from a sporty family, where her mother was captain of the Ukrainian basketball team. “It was clear to me that I would go in the direction of sports, it’s something I grew up on,” she says. As a child she tried a wide variety of sports including tennis, artistic gymnastics and swimming. She discovered artistic swimming at the age of eight. “My mother didn’t want me to be in swimming and then one of the coaches saw me really flourishing in the water and told her that it really suits me to do artistic swimming. I loved it from the beginning, it came relatively easily to me.”

During the current campaign President and Bobritsky took the artistic swimming branch one step further. They became one of the best duos in the world. They were the first from Israel to win two gold medals in the prestigious world tour in Canada 2023 and China 2024. They came within touching distance of the podium in the two world championships and in the last European championship in 2022, finishing in sixth place in both exercises.

Bobritzky explains the magic behind the amazing success and achievements that have never been seen before in the industry. “We were among the first countries to crack the system. As a result, in March of last year, we won a very surprising gold medal in a competition in Canada. We did not expect it, but something there worked. Since then, we have continued on the same wave. This method, as you can go up with it, you She can also fall down with her.”

What do you consider success in Paris?
President: “We are very excited about this Olympics and coming after a difficult period and above all to show who we are, our work and do our best. In Tokyo, Shelly and Eden were in 15th place. We are aiming for 8th place or higher.”

Bobritzky: “In the current Olympics it is a direct final, there are no qualifiers like in the previous years. So we go straight to the technical duet final and then to the free duet final and their sum is the final ranking. So for us it is unequivocally to reach the top 12, which in previous years was the ranking of the final. But We know we can do much more.”

Two weeks ago, Nasi and Bobritsky, together with Aden Behler, did a special tribute to raise awareness for the return of the abductees. “The photographer Adam Spiegel approached us, even then a few months ago when we did the letters for Bring Them Home we did with him,” Bobritsky says. “He comes with a drone and we actually make the shapes in the water, so basically it’s the least we can do to raise awareness of the matter.”

“Achieving the highest achievements in this period is not easy either,” she admits. “Sometimes there are very difficult moments when we realize what situation we and the country are in. In the end we try to do what we can to contribute, to do the little we can.”