Friday

Technical duets; no need to say who won gold, silver and bronze. In either the normal or mixed duets. Though France did not complete in this event. What can you say about technical duets short and not very inspiring, some more interesting than others.

The team event was the final this time Russia did not get gold, possibly because they did not compete, are they trying to creat suspense for the Olympics? This allowed Ukraine to get gold and Spain bronze. The Ukraine team had lots of lifts and throws and this time they seemed to get them better than in the preliminaries. If the competition is available on YouTube then I say watch all of them because there are some very interesting actions.
I am on the train home now looking forward to sleeping in my own bed. Do my washing then back down next week for the Masters.

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Thursday

Morning session, Technical solo final, I will not tell you the medal positions, I think you can guess from my previous blogs. The performances were good, even entertaining.
The afternoon session was the combination teams, again, will not bore you with the medalists. They were very entertaining with a lot of acrobatic moves in them. Two teams managed to get two somersaults in their throws, one team managed a half twist as well. Several teams, the thrown swimmer actually landed back in the team ready for the next pattern.
Tomorrow it is the duet finals and then the team finals.

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Wednesdy

Morning session; free team preliminary eventually the pre swimmers were Rushmoor they scored 67.933 two points behind
Portugal. There was no Russian team so Ukraine came 1st; 93.8000 GB 8th; 78.9667 the swims are getting more spectacular with the team event becoming more like acrobatics

This afternoon was the turn of the duets. Russia again coming first Ukraine 2nd Italy 3rd; GB 8th ( getting boringly repetitive now)
At this competition there were mixed duets, I thought that of the five swum, four were normal duets where a male was substituted for one of the swimmers, only the French duet was, for me, a proper mixed duet as it had defined male and female rolls.
Slight change Russia still first but Ukraine 5th with Italy taking 2nd and Spain 3rd.

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Tuesday

Preliminary duets in the morning, Russia 94.4667; Ukraine 92.2000; Italy 90.5333; GB 79.733 coming 9th. The pre swimmers from Bristol would have come 13th with their score of 73.7667 beating Bulgaria; 71.8667 Serbia; 70.6667 and Portugal 69.6667

The afternoon session was solo final, Natalia Ishchenko, Russia 96.4000; Anna Voloshyna, Ukraine 93.4000; Linda Cerruti Italy 89.4333, should have been 90.4333 if her walk on had not exceeded 30 seconds (30.45). Olivia Federici came 9th with a score of 82.0667

I think that I have a few ideas for routines which I might try out when I get back.
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Monday

As expected Russia gets gold in the technical team with a score of 94.0994. Ukraine second; 92.0844, Italy third; 88.9053; GB eighth; 76.9850. The Bristol technical team swam as pre swimmers, they got 66.0894 two points behind Portugal; 68.2817.
Some of the lifts were awesome, one team, I think Israel, did a 1 1/2 somersault with twist. The thrown team member in the Russian and Ukraine teams almost landed on top of a team mate. All teams, the thrown member landed very close to the team, so when they all surfaced they were in a tight pattern,almost touching each other, especially the top three teams.
I am going to sign off now, will do another blog tomorrow.

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European Synchronised Swimming

Things are a little different since last time I was here, the pool ha lost its bat wings, though the approach from those Westfield shopping centre is the same. There is a lift for me to get down to the pool entrance level, great except that it stopped working after I had used it!! So I have to use the scenic route to get to to entrance.
Will try and do a blog every day starting tomorrow

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Nationals; Gloucester 2015

I am going to try and give a daily report on the clubs achievements at the National Championships in Gloucester over this weekend

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