Synchronized Swimming

Report on COMEN Cup 2009

I attended the COMEN Cup for Synchronized Swimming in Belgrade, Serbia in my capacity as a FINA judge.

I accompanied the SSA 13-15 year team which included 4 EP athletes as well as 4 from other provinces. We flew on Olympic Airlines via Athens and landed in Belgrade on Monday 3rd August. This gave the girls 2 training days before the competition started on Wednesday.

The accommodation, meals and transport arranged by the Serbian Federation were excellent and well organized, we also found them to be extremely hospitable.

The pool was unfortunately only 2 meters deep – not ideal for Synchronized Swimming.  As a result the figure group with the barracuda bent knee was not included in the draw. As judges we were instructed to ignore incidents where athletes touched to bottom of the pool unless we felt this was deliberate.

The judges’ meetings were informative and I enjoyed interacting with the judges from the 19 nations that were participating. I have not judged internationally since 2007 so was rather stressed when I was nominated to judge the first event, the free combination and then discovered it was an unseeded final. Luckily I coped and I am still awaiting my assessment; my scores were not embarrassingly different. In all I judged 2 preliminaries and 2 finals, shadow judged another final and preliminary, and acted as referee to a figure panel.

The EP girls had a good competition. In figures Jess Broughton finished to best of the SA contingent placing 122 out of about 172. Janet Kahn and Jess swam the duet for South Africa and all 4 participated in the team and free combination. A full set of results can be downloaded here. Overall South Africa was placed 8th out of 19 as not all the countries swam in all the events. Individually we were placed last in team, combo and duet but we were not far behind in scores. I felt the girls did well considering their lack of international experience.

Moira Norden