Reading Royals retain 13-15 Yrs Team crown in Gloucester

Reading Royals retained their 13 – 15 Yrs Team crown on the second day of the Swim England Synchro National Age Group Championships 2017.

The Berkshire club scored 67.2333 for their free routine, winning a second straight title by more than six points on 127.6168.

The result also mirrored their clean sweep from 12 months ago, with Mimi Gray winning both Figures and Solo, and the pairing of Gray and Alyssa Basinger defending their Duet title.

With half of last year’s eight swimmers – including both Gray and Basinger – still competing in the middle age group, the Berkshire club were hot favourites to land gold.

And they delivered in emphatic style, breaking 67 points for their Snow White themed-routine to improve by more than 0.7 on their routine score from last year.

“This is our second year that we’ve swum the routine,” said Reading swimmer Izzy Blinkorn, who won Solo bronze and Duet silver earlier in the weekend.

“But we’ve got new swimmers in this year. It was really enjoyable – we all love performing that routine and we work really well together.”

Teammate Rachel Newman added: “It was really great to stand on top of the podium today.

“We managed to reach the score our coach wanted us to get. So it felt great to win gold and know that we’d done that as well.”

Bristol and Salford join Reading on podium

City of Bristol, who were the last club to win the 13 – 15 Yrs Team event in 2015, finished second on 121.1006.

While Bristol didn’t have a medallist in either the Solo or Duet, the strength of their team shone through as they scored 63.8667 for their free routine – the second highest score of the competition.

City of Salford joined Reading and Bristol on the podium, taking bronze.

The North West club scored 63.4000 for their routine, finishing a clear third on 119.9611.

13 – 15 Yrs Team Results