GWANGJU, South Korea, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The medals in the duet technical final of the 2019 FINA World Championships beared more meanings than ever.
Both gold and silver medalists are mothers who chose to come back with strong desire after pregnancy. Russian Olympic champion Svetlana Romashina, 29, swam onto the top podium with her long-term teammate Svetlana Romashina with 95.9010 points, while Huang Xuechen from China, also aged 29, booked a silver medal with Sun Wenyan at 94.0072.
Ukraine duo Anastasiya Savchuk and Marta Fiedina pocketed bronze at 92.5847.
The two mothers have a lot more common topics to share with each other. When Huang met Romashina at the press conference, her first reaction was to show the videos of her baby on the cellphone.
"I think that giving birth to a baby made me more mature now, so now I have a better understanding about the meanings of music, movement--everything," said Huang.
Gaining nearly 30 kilograms after labour, Huang pushed herself to the limit to return to the podium.
"The process was too challenging for me to describe," said Huang, "It was my dream and my team helped me hold on."
Sometimes she trained so hard that she was hit by cramps and she could not move. And sometimes she couldn't even stop the tears welling up in her eyes during the training.
"I had a baby girl now, so I just wanted to set a model for her and tell her that 'you can always do better'," said Huang.
As the oldest in today's Team China, she also aimed to set a record for being the first artistic swimmer who can compete in three Olympic Games --just like Romashina did in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
"It was not that difficult for me to come back because I remembered everything," said Romashina who stated that it was easy for her to regain her level except for the first painful month after she decided to return to the pool.
To Romashina, she was driven into her fourth journey toward Olympic Games by the love of the pool.
How far will she go? To her, answer was unsure. But to her legendary coach Tatiana Danchenko, the answer was "ten more years".
