The fourth leg of the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series 2018 is about to start in Samorin, Slovakia.

There will be 11 participating countries: Austria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Ukraine and the home team Slovakia.

The competition will take place from May 11-13 May in the unique multipurpose sportcomplex X-BIONIC SPHERE. T

he head of the FINA Technical Committee for artistic swimming, FINA technical delegate Lisa Schott, who was present at the opening press conference, held prior the event, was excited with the venue.

“The facilities are some of the best in the world. They are amazing. I’m like blown away”, she complimented the host country and the organisers.

Yana Labudova, Slovak Swimming Federation Vice-President of for artistic swimming also thanked FINA for the opportunity to organise the fourth leg of the 2018 Series.

Encouraging the participants with multiple European Championships medallist Linda Cerruti (ITA) in the lead, Yana Labudova said:

“We are very happy that World and European medallists are taking part in this event. We wish all the competitors the best results they can get. And also, good luck to all the judges”.

Head coach of national Slovak team Gabor Szauder commented on the format of the ASWS 2018 with ranking based on points accumulated over a ten-meet circuit.

“Thanks to the World series, strategy came up like repertoire in artistic swimming. We have great athletes. We could make all four team programmes. This gives us a chance against much stronger countries to get forward and to collect possibly many points. We plan to participate in 5 of 10 legs. We will go to Budapest next week. That’s not a secret. But I would like to keep in secret another stop not to give advantage to our opponents. That will be a surprise. We try to think strategically.”

“We wish to keep going until the last leg of the FINA World series. Our big dream is to be in the top-3 of the ranking. That would be an honour. Hopefully that would open the horizons in Slovakia for artistic swimming. Because we know, that the biggest motivation is success”.

Members of the Slovak team and Olympian Nada Daabousova (the soloist) and Diana Miskechova (her duet partner), spoke of their aspiration in Samorin.

“We would like to focus on the technical programmes at this competition – especially tech duet and tech team, where we expect to place third. In the new discipline, which is the highlight routine, we are aiming to win gold”, Diana said.

“We’ll have the first performance of the free duet here. We want to perform well, to see how much we can improve till the main competition of the season - the European championships in Glasgow”, Nada added.

Underwater photos will be taken by an Australian photographer during the three-day competition. The girls will also get the copies.

“Everything, that makes our sport more popular, can help us”, Head Coach Gabor Szauder admitted.