Synchronised swimming duo Katie Clark and Olivia Federici returned to the London 2012 Olympic Games pool and believe the improvements they demonstrated bode well for the future.
The pair were competing in the final of the Duet Free at the European Aquatics Championships and finished eighth in the final reckoning.
They ended with a score of 81.4333, an improvement of 1.7 points from Tuesday’s prelims.
Clark and Federici have qualified a quota place at the 2016 Olympic Games and, while the final duo for Rio has not been announced, the former is pleased that things are looking up in the pool.
“We’re really happy that we managed to improve our score, we know we had a lot of things to improve on and refine from our prelim swim yesterday,” Clark told British Swimming.
“We went away and we spent the time making the changes and so we’re really pleased with the better score.”
The main improvement for the duo came in their artistic impression as they made their return to London four years on from the home Olympics.
Russian duo Natalia Ishchenko and Svetlana Romashina won gold while silver went to Ukrainian pair Lolita Ananasova and Anna Voloshyna and bronze was claimed by Linda Cerruti and Costanza Ferro of Italy.
And Federici admits the experience will live long in the memory as they continue with their season.
“It’s been great having the European Aquatics Championships here in London and an awesome opportunity to perform in front of a home audience,” she said.
“After London we are going back to Majorca for another training camp with multi-Olympic medallist Andrea Fuentes ahead of travelling to America for the US Open, and then our focus turns preparations for Rio.”
Sportsbeat 2016