Canada’s Free Duet 5th after preliminaries at World Championships

Audrey Lamothe and Jacqueline Simoneau had an early morning start on Day 6 of the World Aquatics Championships held in Doha, Qatar. Due to the large number of entries in the duet free event, the field competes in two separate sessions, with the first group made up of lesser ranked pairs. Because Canada did not compete at last summer’s World Championships in this event, the Canadian pair was in the first group, and drew start number 4.

A mere 12 hours from winning gold in the solo free event last night, Simoneau took to the pool with partner Lamothe with a routine claiming the highest declared degree of difficulty of the field, 45.3. They delivered another clean routine that was awarded full difficulty, for a score of 234.9855 that kept them in the lead for the entire morning session.

“We really wanted to build a routine that represents us well, and we really love this high-energy routine,” said Lamothe. “We also wanted to go in with a high degree of difficulty to show what Canada can do as we try to qualify for the Olympics.”

In the afternoon session, where the world’s highest-ranked duets took to the pool, the Canadian pair’s score was overtaken by only 4 competitors, leaving Lamothe and Simoneau in 5^th position going into the last round, which will be held tomorrow at 2pm local time, 6am EST.

10 duets are already qualified for the Paris Olympics, with another 8 to be named at the conclusion of the competition. Because teams that qualify also get a pass for duet, the final list won’t be known until the end of the team free event on Saturday.

Free Team event starts tomorrow

The last team event that will be used to determine the last 5 teams to punch a ticket to Paris, the Team Free event, will kick off tomorrow at 9:30 local time, 1:30 EST, with the preliminary round. Canada will be the first to swim out of the 16-team field.