Britain’s young synchronised swimmers exceeded expectations at their first World Championships in nearly a decade.
Jenna Randall and Olivia Allison, at their first senior event, finished joint 20th with Austria in the Duet Technical Routine on the first day of the Melbourne World Championships at the Rod Laver Arena.
The result gives British Synchro, which is at the beginning of a development process in time for the London 2012 Olympics, a starting point on which to build to ensure they’re competing with the very elite of the sport in five years time.
National Performance Director Biz Price, who has been in charge of the athletes’ development since her arrival from Canada at the beginning of the year, was pleased with this morning’s outcome which went further than she had hoped for given Britain’s lack of world ranking coming into the competition.
“That was a very good performance and showed more consistency of skills which is what we were after,” explained Price.
“We’re way ahead of the Australians which is a great start. It was a good job and we’re right on track as the judges showed today.
“Overall it showed the improvements we’ve made in just two-and-a-half months. There are a few more areas we need to work upon but the first element of the routine was awesome.
“We still need to work towards a more consistent routine but that’s something that we have time to do as we eye the opportunity of going to the Beijing Olympics and certainly London 2012.”
Judges awarded the British duet an execution score of 42.333 and an overall impression score of 42.500 to give a total of 84.833. This placed them joint 20th out of a total field of 36. They were 4.5 points away from a top 12 finish and a place in the final.
“The girls handled the whole experience very well. From training at 6am this morning to hanging around the venue until their routine at 11.30am, they were very professional. They obviously felt comfortable with the competition itself and that is what these World Championships are about. They were impressive,” added Price.
For Randall and Allison, who have been living and training together at their base in Aldershot in readiness for the World Championships, it was a just reward for all of their hard work.
“It was a really good first time performance for us,” said Randall. “ We worked our corrections and the marks are what we had hoped for so we’re pleased.
“We were looking at the leading nations this morning. They are very good but it doesn’t come as a shock to us, we know where we need to be and this morning showed we’ve taken big steps towards getting there.
“Biz had set us a target of top 22 but personally I was hoping for a top 15 spot. It’s our first senior World Championships and to be honest it’s a bit of an unknown but this morning gave us a good starting point on which to build.”
Allison was delighted with the duet’s performance and feels the hard work undertaken over the past 10 weeks has given the girls the ideal foundation on which to build towards Beijing and beyond.
“We’ve been training in Canada for a month before a two week camp here in Australia,” said Allison. “We had a lot of competition simulations within that time so we knew what we needed to do and it went well this morning.
“We’ve been living together for three months now and training almost everyday to get ready for the biggest event of our careers so far. It’s been hard work but it paid off for us today.”
Tomorrow (Sunday 18th) Randall will compete in the Solo Free Routine Preliminaries.
-ends-
The 12th FINA World Championships will take place from 17th March until 1st April 2007.
The British Sychro squad comprises:
Olivia Allison (Rushmoor)
Jenna Randall (Rushmoor)
Lauren Smith (Rushmoor)
Synchro takes place from 17th to 24th March
Diving takes place from 19th to 26th March.
Swimming takes place from 25th March to 1st April.
Open Water takes place from 18th to 25th March.
For further details contact Dave Richards, British Swimming Media Manager, on 01509 632237, 0778 992 6136 or email dave.richards@swimming.org
British Swimming is the National Governing Body for Swimming, Diving, Synchronised Swimming, Water Polo and Open Water in Great Britain. It is responsible internationally for the high performance representation of the sport. The members of British Swimming are the three Home Countries national governing bodies of England (Amateur Swimming Association), Scotland (Scottish Amateur Swimming Association) and Wales. (Welsh Amateur Swimming Association) British Swimming seeks to enable its athletes to achieve gold medal success at the Olympics, Paralympics, World Championships and Commonwealth Games.
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