JENNA RANDALL: Stella McCartney won’t be designing our competition costumes

Champions of TomorrowSummer Sports

By Jenna Randall

I WASN’T involved in the unveiling of the Team GB kit for this summer’s Olympics – but from what I have seen I think it looks fantastic.

LOOKING GOOD: Jenna Randall is a fan of the kit the British Olympic team will wear at this summer’s Games

It is a different style to what we have had before and it will be great to have a look at it all when the time comes this summer.

That will be in the form of our training costumes but for our actual competition costumes things are slightly different.

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We have a massive say in them and what they look like and what the design is. We work with a designer and we say the little bits and pieces that we like.

She has the final say but it is all a team effort and, because synchro is a judged sport, everything has to have a similar theme – your costumes have to match your whole routine.

So it won’t be Stella McCartney designing our competition costumes but the lady we are using is very well known for what she does and we have used her since the last Olympics in Beijing in 2008.

Actually the day the Team GB kit was revealed I was in the middle of very, very hard physical training – we are doing our routines with weights up to 3kgs currently.

We are pretty much drowning and our muscles are extremely tired, but now is the time to get it all done so that we are fully healthy when it is competition time.

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We have already had our first competition of the year – the Spanish Winter Nationals in Barcelona – and we had a great competition.

The Ukraine, Spanish and Italian teams were there and it was great to see their routines and where we lie compared to them.

We got some good feedback from the judges on our routines. We are always changing them slightly and it means we can get them right for the Olympic qualifier that is coming up.

That is being held at the Olympic Aquatics Centre in London starting on April 18 and it also acts as the test event and it will probably be the biggest competition that I have done in England.

All the world nations will be there trying to qualify for the Olympics – it is almost a mini World Championships because of that.

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It will be great for us to see how we are doing in the water against the best teams in the world – every competition we are trying to make improvements from the last one.

As a team we were lucky enough to get in the pool recently, we did a display after a swimming gala, and it was fantastic to see the pool in competition.

It was great to test the waters and we could see what it was going to be like for the qualifier and it was nice to show everyone our routine. Next time it’ll be for real though.

Jenna Randall is a member of Team Kellogg’s. To celebrate fifteen years of support for British Swimming, Kellogg’s is offering a ‘Free Kids Swim’ on 30 million packs of cereal to encourage families to take the plunge together. Collect a voucher on pack and take it down to your local participating pool.

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