Team Canada is in sixth and fifth place in the team and duet preliminary events at the conclusion of the first day of the 2016 FINA World Junior Championships being held in Kazan, Russia, until Wednesday.

In the team event, the Canadians scored 85.2333 points with their “Flight of the Phoenix” routine and are currently in sixth place out of 17 participating countries.  Russia is in the lead with 90.6667 points, followed by China (88.6000) and Japan (88.5667). Ukraine, Spain and Canada are next, separated by 3.3 points behind third place.

The teams’ routine scores will be added to marks from Monday’s figures competition to determine the final rankings going into Tuesday’s finals.

Canadian swimmers are : Emily Armstrong (Scarborough, ON), Andrée-Anne Côté (St-Georges, QC), Camille Fiola-Dion (Rimouski, QC), Paige Hopper (Calgary, AB), Audrey Joly (St-Eustache, QC), Sion Ormond (Aurora, ON), Halle Pratt (Calgary, AB) and Cassandra Winkelaar (Calgary, AB).  The alternates are Stefanie Dickinson (North Vancouver, BC) and Gwendolyn McGuire(Sherwood Park, AB).

Duet in 5th position

In the duet preliminary round, held in the morning, Andrée-Anne Côté and Halle Pratt (alternate: Emily Armstrong) delivered a strong performance which earned a score of 85.5000 and left them in 5th position.

Veronica Kalinin and Daria Kulagina from Russia are first with 90.2333 points, followed by Kirara Oya and Mashiro Yasunaga from Japan with 88.0333 points and Yana Nariezhna and Yelyzaveta Yahkhno from Ukraine with 87.5333 points. The Chinese are the only other pair in front of the Canadians with 86.8000.  

“We are extremely pleased with the duet’s results from this preliminary round,” stated Associate Head Coach Jennifer Tregale.  “The girls had a great prelims swim and we will work on some corrections to ensure they have an even better one in the finals.”

“This duet has come together as a result of a new 2-year project introduced specifically for the World Championships,” added Synchro Canada Domestic Technical Director Jadine Cleary.  “We were able to put athletes from different clubs and different cities together in order to find the best possible pairing, and the routine has had many revisions from many Canadian coaches.  We’re very glad to see positive results from these efforts.”

“We’re very excited by how well we performed today”, said Côté. “We felt good in the water, swam with high energy and had a solid performance.  We know what we improve on to have an even better swim in the finals and we’re very much looking forward to Tuesday to get it done.”

The finals for both events will be held on Tuesday.

The competition continues tomorrow with the solo preliminaries event in which four-time national champion Halle Pratt will be the Canadian entry.

For results and schedule, please visit the event page. All events are webcast live on FINA’s YouTube channel.