The athlete from Montreal finishes in 6th place in the solo free event and Team Canada sits in 7th after free routine prelims.
Ottawa, ON – Montreal’s Jacqueline Simoneau, 20, finished the Solo competition in synchronized swimming at the 2017 FINA World Championships with a sixth place in the Free Routine. Simoneau’s score of 90.1333 was just 6 points behind the gold medalist Svetlana Kolesnichenko of Russia. Silver went to Ona Carbonell of Spain while Ukraine’s Anna Voloshyna took the bronze.
One of the youngest solo competitors at the top of the world rankings, Jacqueline continues to learn from her peers at the top of the sport, as they will be competing together for years to come. Through each event, she builds on her experience and performance strength toward her goal of reaching the podium at the 2020 Olympic Games.
At the conclusion of the Solo competitions, Simoneau said, “I know I am on a solid development path that will evolve over the next three years. I am very proud that my swimming has reached this amazing level and I will be working hard to keep growing and developing my skills to move up the world rank leading into Tokyo.”
The preliminary round of Team Free was also held today. With 25 entries in the field, Team Canada scored 88.2667 and now sits in 7th place, qualifying for Friday’s finals. Russia is in first place with 96.8000, China is in second with 94,3667 and Ukraine is in third with 92.9000.
Members of the team commented following their performance that “It was a calm and confident swim, that’s what we were aiming for. The theme of our swim was ‘Fire and Ice’ – in the beginning it was like we tried to capture someone with ice, and the girl was trying to break out, then we transitioned to fire, and finally, once again, to ice. We did the same at the Olympic Qualifications in Rio in 2016.
We had a really good preparation before coming to this competition. As we said, it was a really confident swim, even though it is a new team and we still trying to learn about each other, but we felt it was really good.
These World Championships are awesome, it is great to be here.”
Today’s swimmers for the Team Free Preliminary event were : Gabrielle Boisvert, 23 (Cap-Rouge, QC); Claudia Holzner, 23 (Calgary, AB); Gwendolyn McGuire, 19 (Sherwood Park, AB); Marie-Lou Morin, 26 (Westmount, QC); Elizabeth Savard, 21 (Laval, QC); Jacqueline Simoneau, 20 (Montréal, QC); Laurence Vezina, 20 (L’Ancienne-Lorette, QC) and Kali Wong, 20 (Calgary, AB).
Photos Liz Corman
What’s happening tomorrow, July 20, in Budapest
Canada’s new duet, composed of Jacqueline Simoneau and Claudia Holzner, will take part in their second finals of the 2017 FINA World Championships – the Free Duet Finals tomorrow. The pair qualified with its 7th place finish on Tuesday. The event starts at 11:00 am local time (5:00 am EDT) and will be featured on CBC’s live stream coverage beginning at 4:50 am (EDT) on cbc.ca/sports. Canada’s duet is number 6 out of 12.
For all Canadian schedules, start lists, results and links to live stream, please visit the event page on synchro.ca.
For additional information about World Championships, visit FINA’s website.