Chinese to grade synchronized swimming 2008

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