BEIJING, May 4 -- Canadian artistic swimmers enjoyed a flying start as Jacqueline Simoneau topped the solo technical and later joined with Cluadia Holzner to claim victory in duet technical routine on the first day of the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series (CHN) held here on Saturday.
Simoneau breezed to win in 88.3898 points, beating Oleksand Burdova of Ukraine at 84.0224.
Simoneau later competed in the duet technical final together with Luadia Holzner and won in 86.3505. French sisters Carlotte and Laura Tremble came to second with 83.7728 and Oleksandra Burdova/Anna Nosova of Ukraine third at 82.3876.
Simoneau revealed that they train about 8 hours every day and improve a lot with the help of coaches.
"We are lucky that we have a Chinese coach who helps us under water techniques and one Hungarian coach Katarzyna Kulesza who adds more helpful instructions to us," Simoneau said.
In the mixed duet technical, Russian world champions Mayya Gurbanberdieva/Alekandr Maltsev dominated with 88.9296, followed by Atsushi Abe/Yumi Adachi of Japan at 86.3333 and host swimmers Shi Haoyu/Zhang Yayu in third place with 80.7156.
"I was more than 10 centimeters taller and stronger than I was two years ago. I wish I could improve more on technical and artistic element," said the Chinese male swimmer Shi.
With famous local song as the background music and Chasing Dreams as the theme, team China showed power and speed in the team technical routine and won the champion in 93.0837. Canada finished second in 88.0000 and France 86.2652. Ukraine came to fourth 84.9431.
"It was our first appearance this year because we just selected a new national team and trained the new routine for three months. We were full of power and enthusiasm whenever we hear the familiar song," said the Chinese captain Sun Wenyan.
As the fifth leg of the World Series, the Beijing stop attract a total of 280 swimmers from 10 countries and eight domestic clubs to compete in the 10-event meet, including technical routines in solo, mixed duet, duet and team, and free routines in solo, mixed duet, duet, team, combination and highlight.