The International Swimming Federation (ISF) announced China will grade the
synchronized swimming events in next year's Olympic Games.
China's application was approved after the Melbourne Championships in
March, said Yu Li,director of the national synchronized swimming
administration. Previously, China was a technical judge, but next year representatives will
debut as an artistic judge.
The artistic judge in synchronized
swimming normally play an important part who may determine an athlete's
final grades.The criteria an artist judge looks for include: creativity, pool
coverage, interpretation of the music, and presentation.
The announcement came after China's
head coach, Masayo Imura, previous Japanese synchronized swimming
coach,complained there was not Chinese artistic judge.
Yu explained China doesn't have any synchronized swimming
officials who have international A-level qualifications to judge such events and the
new artistic judge will need more practice adjudicating before the Summer Games
in 2008.
Currently Yu is
the only Chinese A-level referee who oversees the technical aspects of the
event.
She added more foreign officials should come to China to judge more
events here so that they can understand how the Chinese train in synchronized
swimming, their music selection and technical and artistic arrangement of their
routines.
