The first synchronized finals, the start of freestyle wrestlers and three volleyball matches: which of the Russians to follow on the 12th day of the Games

The main event of the 12th day of the Tokyo Olympics for the Russian team will be the drawing of the first medals in synchronized swimming.

Svetlana Romashina and Svetlana Kolesnichenko will take part in the final of the duet competition.

Together with athletes from 11 more countries, they will show technical and free programs, based on the results of which the judges will determine the winners.

There is no doubt about the upcoming victory of Russian girls.

At the Olympics, they have not dropped below first place since 2000, and the last defeat at the world championships in duets or groups was in 2001.

Even if we do not take these statistics into account, then two Svetlana, even in qualification, bypassed the Chinese duet by more than three points.

It will be impossible to lose such an advantage, because even technical problems with music do not prevent girls from performing better than everyone else.

Kolesnichenko will have the opportunity to win his second Olympic gold, and Romashina will have the sixth. In this case, the 31-year-old Russian woman will become the most titled synchronized swimmer, beating her compatriots Anastasia Davydova and Natalia Ishchenko. If you take all sports, then Romashina should become the 18th woman in history to win six victories at the Olympic Games. By the way, medals in duets will be played for the first time after officially synchronized swimming was renamed artistic.

The next day of the wrestling tournament will not bring the Russians gold, but you can count on bronze medals.

Artyom Surkov, performing in the weight category up to 67 kg, will try to rehabilitate himself for the defeat in the quarterfinals and take the final third place.

To do this, the Greco-Roman style wrestler must first defeat the Dane Fredrik Bjerrejus, who took fifth place at the last World Championship, and then the Egyptian Mohamed El Sayed, who scored at least six points in each of his matches in Tokyo.

Also, Lyubov Ovcharova made her way to the consolation tournament in the category up to 62 kg.

But her chances of success are not very high.

On the way to bronze, she will face the silver and bronze medalists of the 2019 World Championships Taibe Yusein from Bulgaria and Henna Johansson from Sweden.

A native of Belorechensk, she herself is the vice-champion of the world, but in a different, lighter weight.

Three other Russian medalists will not fight yet, but they can make it to the final.

Zaur Uguyev will compete in the up to 57 kg category, in which he won the last two world championships.

For more than two years he has known defeats.

Arthur Naifonov also has good statistics in weight up to 86 kg.

For almost three years, he was second only to one foreigner - the Olympic champion from Iran, Hasan Yazdani.

They can meet in Tokyo at the semi-final stage.

Valeria Koblova will compete for women in the weight up to 57 kg.

Five years ago, she became a silver medalist, but since then she has hardly performed and won only the Russian championship.

The swimmers have not yet said their last word in Tokyo. Women will swim for 10 km in open water, where Russia will be represented by the only participant Anastasia Kirpichnikova. She has already performed in the pool and was seventh at a distance of 1500 m and eighth at 800 m. The 21-year-old athlete rarely performs in marathon swimming and has not yet had time to establish herself as a contender for awards.

Hammer thrower Valery Pronkin has a 2017 World Cup silver in his collection, but it is also difficult to call him a favorite in his discipline. In the current season, he is only in ninth place in the list of the best athletes, and with such a result it is difficult to claim a lot. However, he got into the final of the Olympics. Also decathlete Ilya Shkurenev will perform in five different disciplines. His competition will end on August 5, and in order to count on medals, it will be necessary to join the fight from the very first 100-meter race. According to his potential, a 30-year-old athlete has the right to think about a medal, but for this one cannot lose a single point within two days.

Volleyball fans will have three matches with the participation of Russians at once. The women's team in the classic version of this game will play with Brazil in the quarterfinals. Sergio Buzato's wards cannot be considered favorites, but once they need to break a streak of defeats in the first round of the playoffs, which has been going on since 2008. Men, we recall, have already reached the semifinals.

In beach volleyball, there will be a repetition of the final of the last world championship. Vyacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovsky will again meet with the Germans Julius Tole and Clemens Wikler. The Russians prevailed in all four matches with them. Also in the morning, Konstantin Semyonov and Ilya Leshukov will play with the bronze medalists of that championship of the planet Anders Mol and Christian Serum from Norway. The Russians have already defeated them in the group stage in two sets, albeit with the minimum possible score of 21:19, 21:19. If both Russian duos make it to the semifinals, then at least one of them will win the first Olympic medal in this sport. Five years ago, Semyonov and Krasilnikov took fourth place together.

The Russian women's handball team also has a chance to enter the quartet of the strongest teams.

She will start the playoffs with a meeting with Montenegro.

Ever since domestic girls won gold at the Rio Olympics, they have always defeated the Balkans in official tournaments.

This time they also have the right to count on victory, because it is not in vain that they took second place in their group, and Montenegro - the third in its group.

In four other sports, the Russians will only participate in preliminary competitions.

Cyclist Denis Dmitriev will begin the hike for the second medal in the personal sprint and will try to get to the 1/8 finals first.

The bronze medalists of Tokyo in the team sprint Anastasia Voinova and Daria Shmeleva will take part in the keirin, where the results are often very unpredictable.

Yulia Timoshinina and Anna Konanykhina will perform in jumps from a 10-meter platform.

To begin with, they will need to make their way to the semifinals, where the 18 best athletes will come out.

16-year-old Konanykhina is the reigning European champion, and from her first attempts it will be clear whether she is ready to compete with girls from other continents.

The first ever climbing competition continues to gain momentum.

After men, girls will also make their debut in this sport.

Yulia Kaplina and Victoria Meshkova will try to be among the eight finalists of the all-around.

Finally, in rowing and canoeing, the main hopes are associated with Olesya Romasenko - in the single canoe 200m competition, she won silver at the last three world championships.