Hey there 👋🏼
Soooooooo. For those of you who may follow me beyond this blog (or on social media), you know that I’ve been traveling and competing A LOT. To be honest, at the beginning of this year, I really thought I would be able to keep up and write about each trip, but clearly that didn’t happen…… so I’m making up for it now, kinda, by wrapping up this years 6 FINA World Series Events!
So far we have competed in Greece, Japan, China, the USA, Canada AND Budapest for the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series Super Final!
It’s been crazy busy and sometimes I honestly didn’t know what day it was, let alone the date – forget it I just found out it is July 😂…..
Anyway…… these last few months have come with challenges, goals and accomplishments. As a new team in January we were not sure how the year would go, but we are learning more about each other and it’s pretty clear to us that this tactic of competing often is one that has brought us closer together. It’s been a learning process. In each competition we have had different preparations and have tested many possible situations….
And now, without further ado, here is my mini summary of each Event!
GREECE – I already wrote about, because I clearly had some extra energy back then, but if you missed it HERE IT IS!
JAPAN – We were in Japan for quite a while and was welcomed with open arms when we arrived in Suzuka for our training camp. In this time period, we visited places around the Prefecture, trained with some of the athletes, met students from different schools and of course trained hard!
We arrived up to Tokyo, confident and ready to show better than we had in Greece! We had some great performances and others that we wanted to work on. All in all, a good start again!
CHINA – Opening our tour in China, we went to the Great Wall where we hiked and saw the most beautiful sceneries!
The competition was at the end of a 5 week trip! We always knew it was going to be one of our tougher ones, just because of the physical toll it would take, but we still came out with performances we could be proud of!
USA – the states was a different one for sure! Jackie and I had gone with Denise Sauve and were only there in Duet. It was a different experience, as we could take the time to fine tune our routines and really put all of our energy into those two performances!
It was a fun experience, spending time with people from other countries and meeting old friends again! Another competition where we would come out with better performances, a lot of positive comments and improvements!
QUEBEC – Quebec was a home crowd – and nothing beats a Canadian cheering squad!! 😉 We trained through the week, pushing ourselves as hard as we could to keep improving and it worked! We came out with some great performances and some new high scores in our routines, including a 90.1 in our free duet!
BUDAPEST – After 5 World Series Events around the world, we were invited to the Super Final where we competed 2 solos, 2 duets and 3 team events.
We took many risks, going into each performance with clear goals and objectives, again testing ourselves as we prepare our routines for the World Championships and the Pan Am Games later this summer!
In the end, it was a super exciting week, as we are officially the first-ever FINA World Series Champions!! 🏆
After a few weeks in Canada, we are en route to KOREA!!! I am super excited to see the venues, be in the Village, meet other athletes and compete with this group – as most of them will be experiencing World Championships for the 1st time!
Thank you for reading and if you would like to follow our progress in Korea, watch LIVE on FINA TV 😘
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Claudia Holzner 