Two bodies, one dive: the mental synchrony behind Chiara Pellacani's record

Five events, five golds. At the 2026 European Aquatics Championships in Paris, Chiara Pellacani closed a perfect Europeans in diving, surpassing the Italian all-time record of three golds held by Tania Cagnotto. She won two titles on her own, the other three in pairs — with three different partners in the same week. The science of interpersonal synchrony explains why building multiple “two-body minds” in a few days is a psychological challenge in its own right, distinct from individual performance.

Author Virginia Marino

01 — FIVE GOLDS, THREE DIFFERENT PARTNERS

The record's composition that intrigues sport psychology

Five events, five golds. At the 2026 European Aquatics Championships in Paris, Chiara Pellacani closed a perfect Europeans in diving, surpassing the three gold medals that were the Italian all-time record, held by Tania Cagnotto. But what most intrigues those working in sport psychology isn't the number: it's the composition of that haul. Two golds she won on her own (1m and 3m individual springboard). The other three came in pairs — in the team event, in mixed synchro with Matteo Santoro, and finally in women's 3m synchro with Elisa Pizzini, at her first continental medal.

In a single week, Pellacani had to build and maintain several different “two-body minds”. It's a psychological load that the times on the scoreboard don't tell, but that the scientific literature on interpersonal synchrony allows us to read in depth.

02 — WHAT IT MEANS TO SYNCHRONISE WITH ANOTHER BODY

The science of interpersonal synchrony

In psychology, interpersonal synchrony refers to the spontaneous or intentional coordination, over time, of movements, emotions, and even physiological activity between two or more people. It isn't just a journalistic metaphor: studies that simultaneously monitor heart rate, skin conductance, and brain activity in two people engaged in a shared task — using techniques known as hyperscanning, that is, the simultaneous recording of both partners' physiological signals — show that the two tend to align their internal states when collaborating toward a common goal.

In synchronised diving this isn't a cosmetic detail: it's the very object of the judging. Unlike individual events, where judges assess execution alone, synchro has a panel dedicated to synchronisation: of eleven judges in total, five score exclusively on how closely the two bodies overlap at every instant of the dive — take-off, approach, lift-off, rotations, water entry. A technically perfect dive that's slightly out of sync between the two athletes loses as many points as a dive with an execution error.

03 — WHY CHANGING PARTNER THREE TIMES IN ONE WEEK IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

The brain that has to recalibrate from scratch

Research published in 2025 in the journal Psychophysiology (Boukarras and colleagues) found that physiological synchrony between two people engaged in a shared action increases when the task is new, while it tends to decline as it becomes familiar and mutual attention relaxes — a “social monitoring” mechanism that reactivates every time the conditions of the interaction change. The same study reports that social anxiety reduces this capacity for alignment, because it shifts the individual's attention onto themselves rather than onto their partner.

Translated into the language of diving: every time an athlete changes synchro partner, the system has to recalibrate from scratch. Underlying this process is what researchers call motor simulation of the other: the brain internally represents not only its own movements but also the movements the partner is about to make, and uses that representation to anticipate them. A series of studies (Novembre, Ticini, Schütz-Bosbach, and Keller, 2012, published in Cerebral Cortex) showed, using transcranial magnetic stimulation on piano duos, that the quality of temporal coordination between two musicians depends precisely on how much each one internally encodes the other's movements — not just their own.

04 — A DETAIL THE JUDGING MANUALS KNOW WELL

The sequential effect in judging pairs' dives

There's a further layer, less known to the public, that makes the psychological pressure of synchro even more insidious. A study by Robin Kramer (University of York, published in Royal Society Open Science in 2017) on Olympic synchronised diving found a sequential effect in judging: the score awarded to a pair is affected, by contrast, by the performance of the pair that preceded them in the rotation. Pairs that follow a very high-scoring performance tend to be penalised in the implicit comparison judges make, unconsciously, from one event to the next.

It's a useful reminder for those working with athletes in judged sports: perceived performance doesn't depend only on what the athlete does, but also on the evaluative context in which that performance is placed — a factor that can be prepared for mentally, but not controlled.

05 — WHAT THOSE WORKING WITH SPORTING PAIRS CAN TAKE TO THE GYM

Four concrete directions for the work

For sport psychologists and mental coaches who work with pair or small-team disciplines (synchro, figure skating, rowing, tennis doubles), this literature suggests a few concrete directions for the work:

• Shared pre-competition rituals: voluntarily synchronising breathing and attention before execution facilitates the spontaneous physiological alignment that follows, reducing the time needed to “read” each other.
• Training mutual reading, not just individual technique: motor-anticipation exercises and immediate feedback between the two athletes speed up the construction of that internal representation of the partner's movement.
• Treating every new pairing as a task to be rebuilt, not a variant of one already known: familiarity with the sport doesn't equal familiarity with that specific body.
• Preparing the more experienced athlete for the role of emotional regulator of the duo: with a partner making her international debut, the psychological stability of the more experienced athlete becomes part of the technical performance, not just moral support.

06 — THE BOTTOM LINE

A specific psychological skill, measurable and trainable

Chiara Pellacani's record doesn't just tell the story of a week of exceptional physical form. It tells the story of the ability to rebuild, several times in a few days, an invisible agreement with a body other than her own — under the eyes of a judging panel trained to notice even a tenth-of-a-second lag. It's a specific psychological skill, measurable by science and trainable in the gym, that deserves the same technical recognition reserved for the forward two-and-a-half tuck.

SCIENTIFIC REFERENCES

1. Kramer, R. S. S. (2017). Sequential effects in Olympic synchronized diving scores. Royal Society Open Science, 4, 160812. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160812
2. Boukarras, S., et al. (2025). Interpersonal Physiological Synchrony During Dyadic Joint Action Is Increased by Task Novelty and Reduced by Social Anxiety. Psychophysiology. DOI: 10.1111/psyp.70031
3. Novembre, G., Ticini, L. F., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Keller, P. E. (2012). Distinguishing self and other in joint action: Evidence from a musical paradigm. Cerebral Cortex, 22(12), 2894–2903. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhr364

News sources: Il Post (6 August 2026), “Il quinto oro di Chiara Pellacani agli Europei di nuoto”; Sky TG24 (6 August 2026), “Europei nuoto, Italia oro nei tuffi sincro trampolino 3m con Pellacani e Pizzini”; DIRE (6 August 2026), “Europei di nuoto, Chiara Pellacani fa cinquina: quinto oro in cinque gare, è record”; Leggo (6 August 2026), “Chiara Pellacani vince l'oro nei tuffi sincro con Elisa Pizzini: è il quinto agli Europei di nuoto”.

Note: this article is intended for informational and educational purposes; it does not replace an individual psychological assessment or programme. References to public figures are based exclusively on verified news sources and statements made to the media.