Difficulty table

Vasilina Khandoshka has conquered the world

Last winter, Vasilina Khandoshka captured bronze at the world championships, winning the first medal in the history of Belarusian synchronised swimming at such major international competitions. The young and ambitious athlete has repeatedly confirmed that this is not a fluke: she won the BRICS Games, rose to the podium of the World Cup stages. Just recently, Vasilina Khandoshka has conquered another height: our beauty had no equal at the 2025 World Aquatics Artistic Swimming World Cup Super Final in Xi’an, China, becoming the winner in the Women Solo Free final.

Belarusian synchronised swimmer Vasilina Khandoshka (in the middle) became the best in the World Cup final in China’s Xi’an

Gold is not the only medal that Vasilina Khandoshka secured in Xi’an. Prior to that, she had successfully completed the Female Solo Technical, taking third place. In the Solo Free programme, Vasilina delivered a scintillating performance — she conquered both the audience and the judges, got an excellent score of 229.8476 points, leaving behind Klara Bleyer of Germany (227.5688) and Xu Huiyan of China (226.5251). The Belarusian athlete performed with the author’s programme The Mummy, in which she is both the director and the performer.
After the victory, Vasilina was lavish in smiles and joy, “I have showed this programme for the second time, the first being at the World Cup in Egypt, where I was the third. We have adjusted and improved the performance, and today I’m the first! The feeling is very good, the opponents are strong, the girls are famous — the more interesting it is to compete! The atmosphere at the World Cup is great, the swimming pool is amazing! It is beautiful and new, although Minsk is better and more familiar. I take this opportunity to invite the fans to the stands in the new swimming pool, where everyone can make their own impression about our programmes. Especially little girls who will definitely fall in love with our sport. We have new rules starting this year, so it is important to understand what the judges need and if our programmes hit the spot.” 
As we can see, they absolutely hit the spot! However, the rules are very complicated. A difficulty table has been introduced. Now athletes are required to perform a certain number of hybrids in their programmes, and a hybrid is a sequence of choreographed leg movements performed while the swimmer is underwater holding their breath. Hybrids are rated based on difficulty depending on the combination of these movements. 
Recall that at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Vasilina Khandoshka performed in a duet (unfortunately, there is no solo in the Olympic competition programme) with Daria Kulagina and took 11th place. After giving birth to a child and changing her last name (now she is Fedoruk), Daria has returned to the pool. Our duo’s first serious try also took place in Xi’an. The result is the sixth place. As a starting point, it is not bad, frankly speaking. 
Vasilina Khandoshka’s next major start will be the World Aquatics Championships, which will be held in Singapore at the end of July. Also note that the successful athlete and beautiful girl, Vasilina, has become one of the main heroines of the new issue of the TEAM BY magazine, which will be released very soon. The Olympic gloss is the result of joint efforts of the National Olympic Committee and the Belarus Segodnya Publishing House.

By Sergei Kanashits