Great Britain's artistic swimmers continue medal winning form in Malta

Following a historic European Championships in Belgrade, Great Britain’s artistic swimmers have been back in action at the European Junior Championships over the past week.

175 artistic swimmers between 15 and 19 years old (20 for male) athletes from 24 countries competed across 11 events at the new Olympic-sized indoor pool within the Cottonera Sports Complex.

Great Britain’s 12-strong squad headed out to Malta for the five-day competition with the group returning with more high level experience and four more medals.

Each of the British medals involved Ranjuo Tomblin who, buoyed on the back of his European title in Serbia, came away with two silvers in the male solo events as well as a silver and a bronze in the mixed duet events.

His medal haul began with silver in the Mixed Duet Technical final, finishing around eight points off gold medal winners Italy.

He teamed with Aquavision’s Loya Cenkci to score 237.3784 for their ‘charleston’ themed routine. It marked an impressive performance in the pairs season together as the junior duet where they’ve had limited training together due to Tomblin’s back injury earlier this year.

Despite that they put together a clean and entertaining performance to continue Great Britain’s medal run at recent international events with silver.

Tomblin’s medal haul

It wasn’t Tomblin’s only new pairing however as he also teamed with Holly Hughes just a few days later to win bronze in the Free Mixed Duet final.

They were amongst just four pairs that broke the 200-point-mark as they asserted themselves on the podium with a total of 224.5543.

The pair had a powerful swim with a very strong artistic impression score for their ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ routine.

Tomblin then went into solo competition where he collected another two silver medals, behind Italy’s Fillipo Pellati.

In the Free Solo his heartfelt performance to ‘Natural’ by Imagine Dragons was greatly rewarded by the artistic impression judges but he ultimately couldn’t fend off Pelati and his higher difficulty mark.

In the Men Solo Technical final, the podium from the free event repeated itself, with Pelati just ahead of Tomblin and Spain’s Jordi Caceres Iglesias taking the bronze.

It was an improvement on last year’s ranking for Tomblin who moved up to silver for bronze with his ‘Greatest Showman’ themed performance.

He scored 243.2799 to round out his competition with four medals adding to the further four he won in Belgrade last month.

Strong performances

There were also some strong performances from the British team and junior duet.

The duet of Eve Young and Florence Blinkhorn continued to get more international experience under their belts after their efforts at the World Aquatics World Cup and the European Championships.

Young and Blinkhorn once again put in some strong displays to finish 11^th in the Free Duet and an impressive seventh in the Technical Duet.

They scored 229.7567 in the technical event as they continue to progress as they approach the Junior World Championships in Peru at the end of August.

The GB team also performed well on the back of their historic bronze at the European Championships in Belgrade.

A number of those from the squad in Serbia were amongst the team which was made up of Blinkhorn, Young, Hughes, Lily Halasi, Pia Lanham, Sophie Rowney, Magdalena Townsend and Amelie Williams with Cara Zielder and Alyssa Anderson in reserve.

They finished seventh in the technical team for their Rio themed routine with a score of 222.8488, which scored around 11 points higher than they managed in Belgrade.

They followed that with an improvement in ranking to sixth in the free team with a total of 248.7563 as they narrowly edged out Germany by less than half a point.

You can see the full results from the European Junior Artistic Swimming Championships here and you can watch back each of the events on the European Aquatics TV YouTube channel.