Nations top artistic swimmers head to Nottingham for National Championships

Around 150 of the nation’s top artistic swimmers are heading to Nottingham this weekend for the GoCardless Swim England Artistic Swimming National Championships 2024.

The meet is the highest level of domestic competition for English artistic swimmers and features some of top young athletes from all four corners of the country.

From Gateshead to Portsmouth, 18 different clubs are heading to the Harvey Hadden Sports Village for two days of exciting action from Saturday 27 to Sunday 28 April.

Athletes will be competing for national titles across solo, duet and team events in the hopes of winning some of Swim England’s most prestigious trophies.

Alongside the free and technical team events, this year’s Championships will also include the acrobatic event which will further showcase the athletes flair.

You can keep up with all the action by following our live scoreboard here with regular updates on Swim England social media channels.

Reports from the competition will be on the Swim England website and anyone who hasn’t yet purchased their spectator tickets can get there’s in Nottingham throughout the weekend.

Reading eye Redwood Trophy quadruple

Reading Royals will be looking to make it a quadruple of Shacklock Trophy wins this weekend.

The prestigious trophy is the most sort after at the Championships and is awarded to the team with the highest combined routine scores in the technical and free team events. In 2023 Reading won by more than seven points ahead of Rugby to complete an immensely successful weekend for the South East club.

They once again bring a strong squad to Nottingham, which includes two previous Shacklock Trophy winners in Francesca Pringle and Lily Halasi.

The pair both took home the top swimmer award at the National Age Group Championships in 2023 and 2022 respecitvely and will be hoping to help add to their clubs success this weekend.

Halasi was also a key part of last year’s Redwood Trophy win, with gold in both the Technical and Free Duet alongside Florence Blinkhorn as well as being part of both Reading’s Free and Techical Team.

She’s just one of Reading’s squad returning from 2023 with Cara Zeidler, Beatrice Askar and Holly Hughes all entered into the competition this time around.

Also amongst this year’s entries are a number of Swim England’s artistic swimming youth squad who will be looking to continue their development on a national stage. The likes of Andrea Eliasson (Aquavision), Madeliene Fish (City of Leeds) and Cerys Snelling (Rushmoor) will all be looking to impress across the weekend.

You’ll be able to find all the event imagery from the competition courtesy of Will Johnston Photography.