Mexican sisters Erika and Lillian Leal also featured in the duet and Japanese sisters Yuko and Yoko Yoneda will figure in the team event. The Mexican sisters were ninth, the Brazilian twins 13th, the Egyptian twins 21st and the Slovakian twins back-markers at 24th in the technical routine which opened the competition on Sunday. Russians Olga Brusnikina and Maria Kisseleva, stripped of the European title they had won in July after Kisseleva failed a dope test, led the way from Japanese and French pairs. The duet returns after being dropped for the 1996 Atlanta Games but in the three previous Olympics twins snapped up three of the nine medal places in the discipline. One of the biggest problems you find in duet is that one of the partners improves quicker than the other.
Twins improve at an equal rate.
Synchro is all about looking the same. Livia and Lucia Allarova, who have been coached by their mother Helena for 14 years, say they share a bond. I know my sister and can think what she's doing. Kisseleva was banned for one month after testing positive for ephedrine, an offence which would normally have carried a three-month suspension, barring her from the Olympics. Russian swimming federation president Gennady Alyoshin said, however, that a lighter sentence had been imposed because the substance had been taken unwittingly in a supplement to control her weight.