Advertisement

Yes, you can bet on that: The Russian athletes lead the 2020 Olympics artistic swimming field

Welcome to our 2020 Olympic feature titled "Yes, you can bet on that." As the Tokyo Olympics get underway we're highlighting some of the niche Olympic sports available for wagers at BetMGM. Up first is artistic swimming.

The athletes from Russia are heavy favorites in both artistic swimming competitions at the Tokyo Olympics.

You may not immediately know what artistic swimming is. Don't worry, it may be due to the sport's name change. Artistic swimming was formerly known as synchronized swimming until 2017. The 2020 Olympics are the first Olympiad with the sport officially titled as artistic swimming.

Artistic swimming is a judged sport that has three panels of five judges each supervising each performance. The judge panels score the performance on factors like execution, impression, technical elements and difficulty. The scoring scale goes from 0-10.

It's been an Olympic sport since 1984. The duet competition was the first to become an Olympic sport and a team competition was added in 1996 and been held every year since.

Athletes from Russia have won 10 gold medals in all competitions — including the defunct solo event — since artistic swimming became an Olympic sport. While Japan leads all countries in medals with 14, 10 of those are bronze medals and the other four are silver.

The second-most successful country in artistic swimming is the United States. The U.S. has nine total medals and five golds. Canada, with three, is the only other country to win a gold medal.

The first artistic swimming event begins on Aug. 2 with the free routine preliminaries in the duet event. The event runs for three days and medals are awarded on Aug. 4. The team event takes place on Aug. 6 and 7 and concludes with the team free routine on that Saturday.

The Russian athletes are massive favorites in both competitions. The Russian athletes are -1200 to win the team competition and -1000 to win the duet competition. No other team’s odds are close as the Russian athletes enter the event as the 2019 LEN European Champions.

China is the No. 2 favorite in both competitions at +550 in the duet and +700 in the team while Ukraine is No. 3 in both at +1200 in each competition.

The United States is only competing in the duet event after failing to qualify as a team. Anita Alvarez and Lindi Schroeder are competing for the Americans and are only available to bet at +2000 under the “any other country” option.

More from Yahoo Sports: