Canada’s 11-athlete junior artistic (synchro) swimming team, including St. John’s native Catherine Barrett, begins competition at the 2018 world junior championships Wednesday in Budapest, Hungary.
The 18-year-old Barrett has been a member of the national junior artistic program since 2015 when she was part of Canada’s 13-15 age-group team. She has been based out of the National Training Centre at the Pan-Am Sports Centre in Toronto for the past few years.
This is her first world junior event, but Barrett has represented Canada at the last two Synchro America Open, winning silver medals on two team events. At the 2017 Canadian Open championships, she won gold in two team events and silver in both the duet and comb.
Her and her teammates’ preparation for these championships in Hungary began last fall at Synchro Canada’s development and evaluation camp, where a 24-member junior athlete pool was selected. Final picks for Hungary were made in March after the Canadian artistic swimming national qualifier in Calgary.
Preparation camps in Quebec City and Toronto followed, and for the past two weeks, the Canadians have taken part at a final training camp.
Besides her participation in team events, Barrett is also Canada’s reserve in the duet technical.
