SPANISH PAIR CONTINUE TO IMPRESS AT BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIPS
The Spanish Duet of Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes continued
their dominance of the British Synchronised Swimming Championships
on the final day of competition.
The World Championship medallists took to the water in Gloucester
to perform their new Free Duet routine and scored excellent
marks ranging from 9.7-9.9. They retained their lead from
yesterday and took victory in the event with 97.583 points.
They take home a commemorative medal in the event.
"This is quite a new routine for us," Mengual said.
"We performed it for the first time at our Spanish nationals
and we will used it at the World Trophy in Brazil. It has
been going well for us.
"Andrea is a new partner for me and it is working well
for us. She is quite young but is really focused and learns
new routines very quickly. I know we have a lot of competition
for Olympic qualification but I know we can do it and do well
in Beijing."
With the lead secured by the Spanish pair the teams from
Israel and Great Britain were left to fight it out for the
second spot. The British pair of Jenna Randall and Olivia
Allison, also representing their club Rushmoor, were drawn
first and showed their style with an excellent performance.
They scored higher than in their Technical routine and finished
with a total of 86.751 - their highest score of the year.
The Duet from Israel looked strong on day one and went out
and put it an impressive performance on the final day. The
Israel Duet scored well but not as high as in their Technical
routine and finished the competition just one point ahead
of the Brits with 87.417.
Of their performance British athlete Olivia Allison commented:
"We wanted to go out and do our best and we were pleased
with how we swam. It was one of our older routines and we
wanted to make people think that it was new. We had to push
it harder to show how much we had improved.
"We got good feedback from our coach and we were happy
with the scores. However, we can do better and we know how
to improve to get the higher marks. Both routines felt good
for us, it was great to display our new technical routine
and get the feedback from that.
"We will be using our new Free Duet routine at the German
Open in January, which we are really excited about. It has
been amazing competing against the Spanish athletes their
new routine yesterday was so good and full of complex choreography
which I was impressed with."
By finishing highest out of the British competitors Jenna
Randall and Olivia Allison will now go onto represent Great
Britain at the Olympic Qualifying event in Beijing in April
with the aim of qualifying a place the 2008 Olympics for Great
Britain.
The team events saw more excitement in the pool with Rushmoor
taking the top spot in the Technical Team and the Free Combination
events in the British Championships, they claimed the gold
in the Technical Team for the seventh time in a row.
They performed the routines with some new members in the
squad and in the absence of Randall and Allison performed
the routines to an excellent standard to take the gold medals.
Team coach Julie Andrews "We performed a new routine
today and I think the girls did incredibly well. We were aiming
to take our seventh national title and we did that today.
The other clubs were working hard to beat us and we knew we
had to pull out an excellent performance today. I think the
girl's elements were especially good and that led us to gaining
the higher marks.
"It has been hard for us this year as we were missing
some of our more experienced athletes. We were missing Jenna
[Randall] and Olivia [Allison] and we only had the chance
to learn the routine with Lauren [Smith] and Louise [Wooley]
on a few weekends, but they did us proud and got us some good
scores."
They finished in the Technical Team event with a total of
71.167, Bristol Central took the silver medal with a total
of 66.667 points and the bronze medal went to Reading Royals
with 65.166.
In the Free Combination Rushmoor won with 74.333 points ahead
of Trafford who took 64.667 points.
The 13 &14 Free Combination saw excitement in the ASA
National Age Groups competition with Bristol Central 'A' battling
against Rushmoor to retain their title. Both teams performed
well and were confident in the water but it was Bristol that
took the title.
The reigning champions took gold with 61.167 points ahead
of Rushmoor - who finished with 59.333 points, Bristol 'B'
took the bronze with 59.167.
The Bristol Central 'A' 13 and 14 coach, Karen Thorpe said:
"They did really well today with a challenging routine.
I wanted to push the girls and see what they could bring out
in a competition environment. They have been working on the
routine all year and they really brought a good performance
out of the bag, I was especially happy with the pack changes."
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