Austria’s 27-year-old Vasiliki Alexandri has been named best female artistic swimmer in the 2024 European Aquatics Athlete of the Year Awards – a year after her triplet sisters Anna-Maria and Eirini-Marina won the same honour.

In a season when her sisters combined to finish one place off the Olympic podium in the duet event, Alexandri also waved the banner for the country they all adopted after leaving their native Greece in 2012.

A double world silver medallist in 2023, Alexandri recovered her form after the relative disappointment of finishing sixth in the technical and free events at Doha’s World Aquatics Championships in February.

She achieved a winning double at the European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade.

Her victories in the solo technical and solo free added golds to the bronzes she had won in the same events at the 2022 European Aquatics Championships in Rome.

Alexandri’s victory rested most strongly on the vote from the federations, of which she earned 34.88 per cent, with 13.27 per cent of the public vote securing her a winning total of 28.40 per cent.

That saw her finish almost three per cent ahead of the British pairing of Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe, whose season peaked as the won duet silver at the Paris 2024 Games, becoming their country’s first Olympic medallists in artistic swimming.

Their season had begun in similarly historic fashion at Doha’s World Aquatics Championships in February, when they won respective silver and bronze in the duet technical and duet free events – making them the first Britons to win a world duet medal.

Shortman and Thorpe – whose total vote of 25.51 per cent comprised 25.58 per cent of the federation vote and 25.35 per cent of the public vote – had prepared for the Paris Olympics by taking duet free and technical silver at the European Aquatic Championships in Belgrade.

They were beaten to gold both times in the Serbian capital by the 25-year-old Dutch twin sisters Bregje and Noortje de Brouwer, who finished fourth in this year’s award with a total of 20.40 per cent after claiming 18.60 per cent of the federation vote and 24.61 per cent of the public vote.

The de Brouwers also began their season with world silver, in the duet free, and they too made the Olympic podium as they finished one place behind Shortman and Thorpe in Paris – thus claiming their country’s first Olympic medal in artistic swimming.

The highest proportion of the public vote – 27.32 per cent – went to Greece’s Evangelia Platanioti, who totalled 19.59 per cent after gaining 16.28 per cent of the federation votes, taking fourth place.

Platanioti’s year peaked in February when she took world gold and silver in Doha, beating Jacqueline Simoneau to gold in the solo technical routine and finishing one place behind her in the free event.

In Belgrade Alexandri was pushed all the way to her European double by Germany’s Klara Bleyer of Germany, who earned two silvers.

Bleyer, who turned 20 on May 6, had already finished fifth in the free and technical events at the Doha World Championships.

And she got stronger as the season went on. She made a huge impact in the World Aquatics Artistic Swimming World Cup, winning her first major title at the World Cup Super Final in Budapest, where she took gold in the free and silver in the technical event.

Bleyer finished fifth with a total of 6.09 per cent of the total vote.