Jones and Nott take fifth in synchronized swimming

12:51 PM, August 20, 2008

Christina Jones (Fremont) and Andrea Nott (San Jose) finished fifth in the synchronized swimming duet competition on Wednesday with a mark of 94.500. Reigning world and Olympic champions Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova of Russia took first with a 99.833.

Spain's Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes finished second with a 99.000, and Japan's Saho Harada and Emiko Suzuki took the bronze with a 97.833 mark.

The next event in the synchronized swimming competition comes on Friday, with the team technical routine. The team free routine will be held on Saturday.

The U.S. squad's technical routine performance will be geared toward the theme of "action," while the Saturday free routine will be geared toward "light," according to USA Synchronized Swimming.

“Our free team routine contains a lot of stuff people have never seen before,” head coach and 1996 gold medalist Tammy McGregor told USA Synchronized Swimming. “It’s all about the ‘wow’ factor and we’ve got it.”

Nott has been blogging about her Olympics experiences. Here's a bit of what she wrote on Tuesday:

We were a lot less nervous than we were expecting to be before the tech swim, and once we hit the pool we felt totally in the moment of every move and totally connected. We had a few synchro errors, but we were really proud of how technically correct we performed each element.

-- Greg Johnson

Photo: The U.S. duet of Christina Jones, right, and Andrea Nott performs on Wednesday during a synchronized swimming final at Beijing's National Aquatics Center. They finished in fifth place. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times