Malta showcased its strongest Artistic Swimming Junior National Team (13-15-year-olds) in the COMEN Artistic Swimming (Synchro) Cup held in Seville, Spain at the end of the 2017 -2018 season. They placed 11th out of 29 countries worldwide in this major international event, gaining valuable experience in the process.
The participating nations were Andorra, Austria, Australia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the U.S. There were 237 female athletes participating in various disciplines with 26 solos, 26 duets, 20 teams and 14 free combinations.
The Maltese artistic swimmers selected for this competition were:
Davida Bonanno
Thea Grima Buttigieg
Kristina Camenzuli
Vanessa Mairangas
Hayley Camilleri
Valentina Marchi
Giulia Casha
Victoria Pace
Ana Culic
Isabella Mari Sammut
The COMEN CUP is the only international synchronised swimming competition in which countries from around the world can participate. The COMEN CUP participants are mainly Synchro swimmers from the countries that touch the Mediterranean but it is also open to all federations of the world of synchro that wish to participate. As a result, the Maltese swimmers competed against strong teams such as Russia, USA, Spain and Italy as well as Colombia, Australia and Kazakhstan, with Russia, Spain and Italy being the all-time favourites.
Individually, Malta also had strong performances and results in the free solo events, free duet and free combination event. Our solo swimmer obtained the best result for Malta to date with a solid 64.7 points, whilst the duet missed the final by only 0.4 points. The Free combo team managed to reach the finals for the very first time, ending 9th in COMEN ranking.
The swimmers were also consistent on Figures day and received Personal Best (PB) scores inthis competition. When compared to last year's results obtained, Malta improved by a fullten points in figures and this was a great achievement bearing in mind that, for some of theteam, this was their first ever international competition.
Albertina Onsea, Head Coach of the Malta National Team, believes that, with a young team,being present on the world stage is an extremely important facet in the development of National Team competitors. She is very happy and proud of her Maltese swimmers' results also considering that the Team event was presented for the very first time in such animportant international competition. The great amount of hard work, effort and hours putin by the swimmers in the last few months before this competition paid off and this will beused as groundwork for next year's World Championships for this same age group, as well asother high-level competitions planned. A word of thanks must also be spent in favour of theathletes' parents for the patience and support they extend to them throughout the year inthe long hours necessary for their preparation and training.
After a short period of well-deserved rest, the National Team have started its High-Performance programme for the season under the auspices of ASA and Sport Malta. Newswimmers were introduced to the team in September, kicking off with pre-season training,training camps and development competitions planned throughout the season.