Great Britain’s artistic swimmers ready to showcase new routines at World Cup

Great Britain’s artistic swimmers return to competition this weekend at the opening leg of the World Aquatics World Cup in Paris.

A squad of 13 and five staff are heading to the French capital for their first event of the calendar year where a young GB team will take on a host of senior athletes.

The three-day event, running from 28 February to 2 March, will feature Paris 2024 medallists from the USA and Spain, as the British group look to take their first steps towards the world and European Championships this summer.

The British contingent will be focusing entirely on the technical events throughout the competition with European champion Ranjuo Tomblin amongst those looking to impress on the world stage.

He heads into both the Male Technical Solo and the Mixed Duet Technical event where he’ll be partnered by Holly Hughes. The duo joined forces to secure European Junior bronze in the Mixed Duet Free last year and the pair will be looking to test their new technical routine at the Piscine Georges Vallerey.

The event in Paris will also see the debut of Great Britain’s new duet of Eve Young and Robyn Swatman and a new soloist in Loya Cenkci – who’s another junior set to take on senior level competition.

Great Britain’s team will round out the British action at the competition on Saturday evening as they look to add to their historic European Championship bronze from last year with a solid performance at world level.

A big development year

It’s the first chance for the squad to showcase their new routines in competition and Swim England Artistic Swimming Manager, Karen Thorpe, is excited to see what they’ve been working on in the off season come in to effect.

She said: “We’re really excited to be heading to the first leg of the World Cup in Paris. We’re taking all brand-new routines and choreography, trying to focus more on our artistic impression so we’re not just aiming for a high difficulty.

“It will be interesting to see how that will play out, especially for our new duet of Eve and Robyn who will be performing the new technical duet routine that we’ve been working on.

“This is a big development year for them where they will be swimming for the duet so we can really upskill them and give Kate (Shortman) and Izzy (Thorpe) more time to rest after such an intense year in 2024.

“We also have Loya swimming her technical solo for the first time. She’s still a junior so it will be great to see how she gets on against a field full of senior athletes.

“It’s similar for our junior mixed duet of Ranjuo and Holly. They performed really well last year but there’s been some exciting new changes to the mixed duet format so we’re looking at that closely to see how they go.

“Then we have the team where we’ve put in a lot more technical difficulty this year. The group we’re taking to Paris is made up almost entirely of junior athletes and we’re hoping that the increased difficulty and impression will go down well with the judges.

“So, it’s a really important event for us, our first of the year and one that can give us a platform to build on as we prepare for the major events in the summer.”

All events from the competition can be watched live on the Eurovision Sport platform and results will be available on the World Aquatics website.