City of Bradford Artistic Swimming and reigning Yorkshire Champions, have once again brought home several national medals, including golds, bringing their incredibly successful competition season to a close for another year.
38 swimmers aged from 8 to over 40, represented Bradford in the Swim England National Combo Cup and Masters Championships, held last weekend at Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield.
They were competing against 33 clubs from across the country, with almost 1,000 athletes and 95 teams performing their artistic swimming routines. These results mean that City of Bradford Artistic Swimming is now ranked 10th in the country.
Last year’s gold medallists for the club were the Diamonds team, but this year it was the turn of the Masters Opals team in the 25-39 age category, pushing fellow Top 10 club Aquavision Swimming Club from North London into second place, by only 0.4333 of a point.
The 30-39 duet of Charlotte Hughes and Emma Knight, who have both competed in this sport since they were children, won a 2nd gold.
Sapphires won bronze in their 13-18 Division 1 category, and the youngest teams of Pearls and Rubies came 4th and 6th in their very competitive sections.
Pearls and Rubies both also achieved the accolade of winning the bonus points for their sections, as they achieved the lowest synchronisation errors in their categories.
Head coach, Charlotte Hughes said: “I am incredibly proud of our 38 swimmers and all our coaches and volunteer parents. The medals we won were fantastic, but I was also delighted to see that all our teams had some of the lowest synchronisation errors in the whole competition, out of 95 routines.
"We can say we definitely put the ‘sync’ back into Artistic Swimming."
Kirsty McGregor, Parent and Team Manager said: “Considering we have much less resources than clubs from many more affluent areas, and less pool time available for training, our amazing coaches still manage year after year to develop youngsters from good swimmers into superb athletes. We consistently show we can compete with the best from around the country. It’s lovely to see all our teams supporting each other and we look forward to welcoming more new beginners to our taster sessions in September.
"It’s such a fantastic sport for youngsters to be involved in.”
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