Canada’s Artistic Swimming team ready for Pan Am Games

The Pan Am Games artistic swimming competition gets underway on October 31 in Santiago with the presentation of the technical events in duet and team. Team Canada landed on Friday in Chile and has putting the final touches on its preparation and spending time getting used to the competition pool built especially for the Games at Estadio Nacional.

“The organizing committee has done a great job putting together this venue for the Games,” said team co-captain Kenzie Priddell. “The pool, the stage, the lighting – everything is great! Now it’s up to us to go in and deliver.”

First up will be the duet technical event, where Canada’s new pair of Audrey Lamothe and Olena Verbinska will compete together for the very first time. “Olena and I have a great connection, even though we haven’t been swimming together for a long time. We’ve improved a lot over the past months are we’re looking forward to showing what we can do,” said Lamothe.

The Canadian duet will be the 6th pair to compete in the event, out of 12 competitors, which starts at 1pm Chile time (12 noon EDT).

The Team event will get underway later in the day, at 9pm Chile time (8pm EDT). For the first time in international competition, the final rankings in team will be determined by the aggregate score of 3 different events: the technical and free routines, plus the acrobatic routine. The technical routine event will be first on the docket on Halloween day, where Team Canada will be swimming 6th out of 8 teams.

Team co-captains Kenzie Priddell and Jonnie Newman can’t wait for the event to begin. “Right now it’s a mix of nervousness and excitement, and we’re definitely ready to come together for this,” said Priddell. We’ve been working really hard in preparation for this event and have been looking very good in the past few weeks.”

“The technical routine is always nerve-racking, because there is so much at stake” added Newman. “It’s the first team routine of the competition and you want to put your best foot forward and swim well right off the bat. I’m so proud and how resilient we’ve been and how we’ve been progressing each day. We’re ready for the big show!”

The athletes taking part in the team technical event will be

Sydney Carroll (Saskatoon, Sask.)
Scarlett Finn (Toronto, Ont.)
Audrey Lamothe (Montreal, Que.)
Jonnie Newman (Calgary, Alta.)
Raphaelle Plante (Quebec City, Que.)
Kenzie Pridell (Regina, Sask.)
Claire Scheffel (Brantford, Ont.)
Florence Tremblay (Rimouski, Que.)