Audrey Lamothe, from Montreal, entered the World Cup Artistic Swimming Super Final with the same goals she’s been pursuing all year: perform to the best of her abilities and continue to improve both her scores and her world ranking.
On Friday, in the opening event of the competition held in Oviedo, Spain, she delivered a powerful performance that hit all the marks, improving her personal best score by 20 points and earning the bronze medal in solo technical.
“I’ve been working very hard on my hybrids and elements, and I’m very proud that I reached my declared degree of difficulty in all of them today,” stated Lamothe after receiving her second World Cup medal of the season. Her score of 239.2034, which placed her a mere 0.4 points behind the silver medal position, is a whopping 43 points increase over the 196.2833 score that earned her bronze last March at the World Cup Markham, Ontario.
Lamothe credits in part her relationship with coach Liza Yakhno for her steady improvement. “Working with Liza has provided me with some stability as I learn to work with the new scoring system. She has so much experience swimming solos herself, she really understands what I’m going through and is able to calm me down and boost my confidence.”
Canada also took part in the Team Technical event in the evening session, and once again delivered by swimming cleanly to move up in the world rankings and finish in 5th position. Swimming an increasingly difficult routine since the beginning of the season, the squad got credited for its full degree of difficulty of 32.1, raising the bar by over 6 points from its initial competition outing with the new system last March.
“This swim was exhilarating!” exclaimed team captain Kenzie Priddell, from Regina, SK. “We’ve really been bonding as a team through our training camp in Budapest and since we arrived in Spain, and this evening we were able to really push through our nerves and leave it all in the pool.” Also competing in the team technical event were Sydney Carroll (Saskatoon, SK), Laurianne Imbeau(Québec City, QC), Jonnie Newman (Calgary, AB), Raphaelle Plante (Québec City, QC), Claire Scheffel (Brantford, ON), Florence Tremblay (Rimouski, QC) and Olena Verbinska (Toronto, ON),
The competition continues tomorrow with the Solo Free (Audrey Lamothe), Duet Technical (Kenzie Pridell/Jonnie Newman) and Team Free events.