The Canadian pair of Jacqueline Simoneau and Karine Thomas started their participation in the 2016 Synchro America Open today with a third place finish in the duet technical event.
“Today has been a hard day for us,” stated Head Coach Meng Chen. “We have been working very hard and have specific performance analysis data that indicates we have improved, but the marks we received today are lower than at the Japan Open two months ago. The marks would have us believe that have we have gone backwards, which we strongly disagree with.”
“We’re disappointed with this result,” added Synchro Canada CEO Jackie Buckingham. “It is difficult to understand why we had scores ranging from 7.8 to 8.8 on the ballet leg element, for example. The judging criteria needs to be more clear so the athletes understand exactly where they need to improve.”
“Tomorrow is a new day,” concluded Chen. “We will take the feedback we have received and come back with an even stronger free routine performance.”
The free routine preliminary round is scheduled for today at 7:15pm PDT.
Schedules, start lists and results for the competition are available on the event website. All events will be webcast LIVE from Riverside.