2024 Paris Olympics: USA artistic swimming earns silver with help from viral underwater moonwalk

The United States’ artistic swimming team, which went viral earlier this week for its impressive underwater moonwalking, performed a strong acrobatic routine Wednesday that gave the team a silver medal. The second-place finish marks USA artistic swimming’s first medal since 2004.

China, who is always stellar at artistic swimming, took gold with an incredibly dominant performance. China finished with 996.1389 points, more than 81 ahead of the U.S. and nearly 300 points above the last-place competitor, Egypt.

The artistic swimming team competition takes place in three rounds, where teams perform three routines — a technical routine, a free routine and an acrobatic routine — on three consecutive days. The final score is cumulative, based on all three routines.

On Monday, Team USA started things off strong with a viral Michael Jackson-inspired performance for its technical routine, which included a sequence where it moonwalked upside-down. The team pulled off the incredibly difficult move while Jackson’s hit song “Smooth Criminal” played and finished with the fourth-highest score, 282.7567, as a result.

The U.S. then followed up with an especially strong performance in its free routine, earning 360.2688 points and moving into second place.

Wednesday, the third and final day, was for the acrobatic competition, where teams perform tricks and jumps while in the pool — like a partially underwater cheerleading competition.

The final round showcased a series of creative, complex routines, including a performance set to a trap remix of “The Lion King” soundtrack (Egypt), an homage to Moulin Rouge (France), a routine with a mashup of “O Fortuna,” Eminem and some sick guitar riffs (Spain), an alligator-themed routine (Japan) and much more.

Spain, who competed in the middle of the table, had a strong acrobatic performance and went ahead early with a total score of 900.731. It would go on to finish in third place and earn the bronze.

Team USA competed second to last, performing a stellar “sorceress”-themed routine that put it into first with 914.3421 total points. China then put up an incredible performance of its own to take gold, leaving the United States very happy with silver.

Artistic swimming isn’t quite done yet — qualifications for the duet event take place Friday, with the final Saturday. Americans Jaime Czarkowski and Megumi Field, who also competed in the team event with Team USA, will compete as a pair against a stacked field.