Athens 2025: Returning medallists to help Spain and Italy seek more success at European Aquatics Junior Artistic Swimming Championships

Returning champions will help Spain and Italy, who dominated last year’s European Aquatics Junior Artistic Swimming Championships in Cottonera, Malta, to maintain their standing at the 2025 edition which starts tomorrow in Athens, running until June 29.

Both nations have selected 14 athletes for the impending competition at the Olympic Aquatic Centre. Greece and France are next largest teams, numbering 13.

Included in the Spanish team are Naia Alvarez Vicente and Rocio Calle Garcia, who will defend the women duet technical and free titles they won last year.

Also defending Spanish gold, in the women solo free, will be Isabel Shuang Cui Xu, who also won solo technical silver last year.

Italy are able to call once again on the 2024 mixed duet technical champions, Ginevra Marchetti and Gabriele Minak.

Great Britain’s 10-strong team includes Ranjuo Tomblin, who finished in silver-medal position behind the Italians last year in company with Loya Cenkci and also earned bronze in the mixed free event with Holly Hughes.

Tomblin won senior European bronze in the solo free earlier this month before  making the podium at the World Cup Super Final in his new partnership with Paris 2024 bronze medallist Isabelle Thorpe.

At this year’s Championships Tomblin will be concentrating on solo events, having won silver in last year’s men’s solo technical and free events shortly after becoming the first Briton in 39 years to earn an artistic swimming gold at the senior European Aquatics Championships.

Italy’s Flaminia Vernice, who won mixed duet free gold with Filippo Pelati in 2024, will concentrate this year on the women’s duet free and technical, where she will be partnered by Sarah Rizea, who claimed senior European silver with Pelati last year in the mixed duet technical.

Spain’s Ariadna Benito Da Silva, who won mixed duet technical bronze with Jordi Caceres Iglesias last year, is on the roster again this time round in the team free, team technical and acrobatic routine.

France includes the pairing who took silver behind Vicente and Garcia in the 2024 women duet technical routine, Prune Tapie and Lou Thullier.

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics

 

The post Athens 2025: Returning medallists to help Spain and Italy seek more success at European Aquatics Junior Artistic Swimming Championships first appeared on European Aquatics®.