Boudreau-Gagnon and Rampling Clinch Sixth in First Olympic Final

August 20, 2008, BEIJING: First-time Canadian Olympians Isabelle Rampling (Burlington, Ont.) and Marie-Pier Boudreau-Gagnon (Riviere-du-Loup, Que.) finished in sixth position in the synchronized swimming duet event at the Olympic Games in Beijing, China today.

“"We are very happy with our swim today. Yesterday, we swam our life-time best performance so the bar was set pretty high coming into finals,” says Boudreau-Gagnon. “We realize now that moving up in the rankings in the future is very doable. The gap between us and the Americans was much smaller this time around."

The pair executed a near clean routine and earned a routine score of 47.667, improving on their preliminary free routine score by more than three tenths of a point, to hold on to the sixth place seating they earned in the preliminary event. Their total score of 95.084 was not enough to catch up to the fifth place American duet of Andrea Nott and Christina Jones (95.250).


Russians Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova repeated their 2004 Olympic duet win, earning perfect tens from the five technical merit judges and three artistic impression judges in today’s free final. Their 49.917 gave them a spectacular combined score of 99.251. The Spanish duo of Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes took silver, claiming Spain’s first Olympic medal in synchro. They earned 49.500 points in their free routine and 98.334 overall, leaving them 0.917 behind the Russians.

Japan continued their record of winning a synchronized swimming medal at every Olympic Games since synchro’s 1984 Olympic debut. The duo of Saho Harado and Emiko Suzuki improved on their preliminary performance to earn 48.917 in free routine for a combined 97.167 points, enough for bronze.

China's identical twins Jiang Tingting and Jiang Wenwen were unable to reproduce their clean preliminary free performance, claiming a free routine score of 48.250 and a combined score of 96.334, leaving them just off the podium.

"I am very satisfied with the Canadian duet’s performance today and believe this will have a positive impact on our team as we prepare for the team event two days from now,” says Canadian Head Coach Denise Sauve. “Canada has demonstrated great progression on the world stage over the last year and I believe that today was a great stepping stone."

The Canadian squad will take to the pool on August 22 for the team technical event.

Synchro Canada is the national governing body for the sport of synchronized swimming in Canada. We support the development of synchro athletes, officials and coaches at all levels. Speedo and Eco-Fusion are proud sponsor of Canada’s national synchro teams.

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