Daily Times

GLASGOW: Synchronised swimmers Svetlana Kolesnichenko and Varvara Subbotina were crowned as the first champions at the inaugural multi-sports European Championships on Friday. The Russian pair, a combination of youth and experience, dominated the duet technical routine at Glasgow’s Scotstoun Sports Campus, performing to the soundtrack of musical ‘Chicago’. Their compatriots Aleksandr Maltsev and Mayya Gurbanberdieva then underlined their country’s familiar dominance in synchro events by taking the duet technical mixed title. Subbotina, a 17-year-old, and Kolesnichenko, a 24-year-old who has won 13 world titles and was part of Russia’s gold medal winning team at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, are only in the first year of their partnership. The penultimate duo to perform, they dominated the event with a total of 95.1035 points, in a different league to Ukraine’s silver medallists Anastasiya Savchuk and Yelyzaveta Yakhno (92.6188) and Italy’s bronze winners Linda Cerruti and Costanza Ferro (89.7519). Maltsev, a double world champion in the mixed duet free, and Gurbanberdieva, a 19-year-old with a stellar junior career behind her, sealed the Russian golden double with 89.5853 points from Italy’s Manila Flamini and Giorgio Minisini (88.6973) and the Spain’s Berta Ferreras Sanz and Pau Ribes Culla (82.3217).

Published in Daily Times, August 4^th 2018.