About the Swim England Artistic Swimming National Age Group Championships 2024

The GoCardless Swim England Artistic Swimming National Age Group Championships is the premiere competition for young artistic swimmers in England.

What can I expect from the Artistic Swimming National Age Group Championships?

The National Age Group Championships are where the best young talented artistic swimmers in the country compete for medals and glory. Athletes have to achieve nationally set standards to qualify for the competition.

There are six different events at the National Age Group Championships: Figures, Solos, Duets, Mixed duets, Teams and Free Combination.

1. All athletes will begin the competition by completing four Figures which increase in difficulty for each age group. The total of the figures scores for each age group are added to the respective routine scores.
2. The top 12 highest scoring athletes in each figure age group go forward to compete in the Solo competition, where the athletes show off their creative and athletic skills on their on their own to their chosen music.
3. The Duet competition is open to the top 12 placed pairs from the figure results. With boys only recently being allowed to compete in the Mixed Duet competition, all mixed duet pairs will swim. Athletes must be from the same club to compete as a duet or mixed duet.
4. All Teams, featuring between four and eight athletes will perform their unique and highly synchronised routines.
5. New for 2024, The Free Combination will feature between four and ten athletes and promises to show off the best creativity of all the routines.

What is the format of the competition?

All routines have set time limits, from two minutes for solos to three minutes for Teams and Free Combination. A tolerance of five seconds either side of the time limit is allowed. Swimmers have between 20 and 30 seconds to walk on into position, and must be in the water within 10 seconds of the whistle going.

The choice of music and the overall choreography is up to the coach, but they must comply with the set number of elements and acrobatics set out in the rules.    A coach card is submitted prior to the competition which specifies the degree of difficulty.

Routines are assessed by technical controllers who check the routines match the coach card submitted. If the element doesn’t match the coach card, a base mark will be given.

Synchronised technical controllers count any synchronisation errors and they are deducted from the score. Two panels of judges are in place to score each of the elements (the design, height and accuracy of the move) and artistic impression judges will give three scores for each routine: choreography and musicality, performance and transitions.

Medals are awarded to the top three places after the final rankings are calculated from the total routine scores added to the total average of the figure scores from their respective duet or team.

2023 Results

• 2023 Championship Results can be downloaded here: 2023 results
• Read the 2023 reports here: National Age Group Championships 2023 News