BEIJING, April 23 -- Hosts China continued its dominaation at the 2011 synchronized swimming China Open on Saturday by claiming two more gold medals.
As the only participant in the technical routine team competition, China scored 47.833 points in execution and 48.000 in overall impression to take the title in a total of 95.833.
Austria, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Netherlands sent athletes to the China Open, but neither entered the team event.
"I think they did a good job today," said China's Japanese coach Masayo Imura, who coached China to their first Olympic synchronized swimming medal in 2008. "Some new swimmers were lack of power and we will deal with that in the following days."
In the technical routine duet, Chinese pair Liu Ou and Huang Xuechen showed their elegance and difficulty to win the title with 95.000, while Kazakhstan's Anna Kulkina and Aigerim Zhexembinova took the silver in 87.500. Elisabeth Sneeuw and Nicolien Wellen of the Netherlands settled for the bronze in 86.166.
Liu was quite happy with the result. "I am satisfied with our performance," she said. "I have paired up with Huang for only two weeks and I think we performed very stably. But we still have some problems in synchronization."
Imura also praised the pair. "The two girls played wonderfully," she said. "Especially in their difficulty and power. I have confidence in them, and I think they will do better in the future."
"I will take the China Open for a good chance to find problems of the players and try my best to deal with it in future training," added Imura, who just came to the national team in early April. "Before picking up the squad for the World Championships in Shanghai, I want to give all the players a chance to show themselves first."
The 2011 synchronized swimming China Open, which will run through Monday, serves as a warm up for the world championships to be held in Shanghai in July.
The Chinese national synchronized swimming championships took place along with the China Open.