British artistic swimming team ready to showcase new routines in European test

A 12-strong artistic swimming team will represent Team GB at the European Games as they look to showcase new routines and improve on their rankings.

The squad will travel to Poland’s Oswiecim Aquatics Centre for the competition – which is also doubling up as the senior European Artistic Swimming Championships.

Artistic Swimming events at the Games take place from 21-25 June and the team includes a mixture of those with Olympic and international experience plus a number making their senior international debuts.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games pair of Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe will contest the duet technical and free events and will be looking to build on their impressive bronze medals at the Montpellier leg of the Artistic Swimming World Cup.

Ranuo Tomblin and Beatrice Crass will compete in the mixed duet free and technical competitions – the first time the European Games has featured the category.

Team GB will also be in action in the free, technical and acrobatic team events and are busy refining their routines at British Swimming’s High Performance Centre in Bristol ahead of the competition, which carries qualification spots for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The Games will be available to stream on europeangames.tv and you can follow all the results on the events website.

Very excited

It is the ideal season-opener for the squad before the World Aquatics Championships in July.

Isobel Davies, Team GB captain, said: “We are really looking forward to showcasing our new routines for the first time. 

“Since our training camp in Turkey, we have been working on increasing the difficulty of the routines. 

“We are very excited to compete our acrobatic team because it’s a new event for us and we feel as though we have improved our lifts a lot this year. 

“We think that the new scoring system is a good opportunity for us to improve our rankings. 

“The new rules add an extra element of excitement to the competition so we are really looking forward to competing for the first time this season in Poland, and seeing how we score against the other teams.”

The full schedule for the artistic swimming events at the Games can be found here.

Our first athletes have started landing in Kraków, ahead of the third edition of the Games

177 athletes will compete for Team GB across 18 Olympic disciplines, with competition starting this Wednesday ⏳ pic.twitter.com/p7CSfHwp9Z

— Team GB (@TeamGB) June 19, 2023