In the Free Solo event, Svetlana Kolesnichenko entertained the crowd with her flexibility and movements as she swam her way to the top spot with a score of 92.500.
Despite winning, Kolesnichenko believes that she can perform much better; ‘They were okay scores, I am happy though. I did good corrections in my Final and it was better than my Preliminary. I’m aiming to remain number one for the rest of the year and I will hopefully moving up to seniors in a couple of years time.’
The battle for silver was won by Spain’s Cristina Salvador whose score of 90.000 was enough avenge her country’s two bronze medals already won in these Championships.
‘I’m really excited because I expected bronze as the competition is really difficult. I’m happy with the scores.’
Salvador is one of five junior squad members that have been earmarked by Spanish Head Coach Ana Tarres to begin training with the National Senior squad.
‘I’ve been pleased with all of my training and it’s great to close the season with such a great result: I’m ready for the seniors,’ Salvador said.
The bronze medal went to Lolita Ananasova of Ukraine with a score of 89.666. After claiming third place she said; ‘I am pleased with my performance because I was aiming for bronze I’m really pleased to have moved my country from fifth last year up to third place.’
Later in the day the Championships came to a close with the Duet competition. In similar fashion to the Free Solo event the medals were awarded to Russia, Spain and Ukraine.
The Russian pairing of Aleksandra Zueva and Ksenia Voynova captured the gold medal with an exciting performance earning them 93.000 points. This is the second year in a row that Russia has won all four gold medals at the LEN European Junior Synchronised Swimming Championships, showing their dominance in the sport.
Of the Championships Zueva said; ‘We are so happy. The team has performed so well in the competition and we’ve won four gold medals and the Figure competition. We expected to win four golds but the scores tonight were so good and we’re very happy with them.’
Spain’s Cristina Salvador claimed her second silver of the day with her Duet partner Clara Baslana. The duo’s energetic performance was scored at 90.667 and the girls were pleased to receive their medal; ‘We were tired today so we’re really happy because the scores were good. We never expected 9’s. We’ve got a one week break now and then it is back to training in Barcelona.’
Third place and the bronze medal, once again, was awarded to Ukraine, whose Duet team of Lolita Ananasova (Solo bronze medallist) and Anna Voloshyna scored 89.667.
Of the competition the Ukranian Head Coach, Svetlana Saidova, said; ‘I’m very happy with the girls, they put in a good performance today and we’re pleased with the scores, we’re very happy with their performance throughout the week. We’ve got a good team of coaches [Valeziya Megenina and Olesya Zaytseva] who have worked hard to achieve this result.’
The British Gas Synchronised Swimming Duet, consisting of Katie Clark and Cherry Wilson, earned a score of 79.167, which was enough to get them 11th place.
Of the performance Clark said; ‘The coaches told us to put everything into that performance and they said they were happy which is really good. We wanted to go into it and enjoy and it felt good out there.
‘There was an improvement from prelims which we are happy with. We were aiming for 8’s so we are pleased with the scores.’
