Canada’s artistic swimming squad continued it bid for Olympic qualification this afternoon at the Doha World Aquatics Championships with the presentation of the Team Technical final.
In 5th position after the preliminary round, Canada was looking for another clean performance that would earn full difficulty mark and keep them in the hunt for one of the tickets to Paris. It quickly became clear as the event progressed that all teams meant business in this final, with most receiving full credit for their difficulty points – increasing the pressure for Canada to lock in a base mark-free routine.
The team was up to the challenge and managed to deliver another strong swim, earning a final score of 253.5330, good for a final ranking of 6th in the world. The Chinese team added another gold to its impressive haul from this week, with the Spaniards taking silver just ahead of Japan.
“The excitement and energy going into this routine was just on another level tonight,” said team member Claire Scheffel. “We’ve developed a real connection that gives us so much confidence when we dive in.”
“We have a ritual before going in that’s been working incredibly well so far this week, so we’re sticking to it,” added Sydney Carroll. “The new system puts even more pressure on avoiding mistakes which is incredibly nerve racking, so it’s all about trusting yourself and trusting your teammates.”
The team technical program was the second of 3 events that will be aggregated to determine the countries that will get the 5 remaining tickets to Paris. Today’s score puts Canada in 4th position amongst the unqualified countries, in the middle of an extremely tight race between 7 countries. The results from the last event of the competition on Friday, the Team Free program, will determine the final rankings.