Jodie Cowie and Genevieve Randall put in their best performance at a major competition to finish 24th in the Duet Free prelims at the Kazan 2015 World Championships in Russia.
Competing at their first World Championships as a duet pair, the 17-year olds scored 76.0333 for their routine to repeat their result from the Duet Tech competition earlier in the competition.
The Brits scored 22.6000 for their execution, 30.9333 for their artistic impression and 22.5000 for their difficulty as they fell just eight points shy of the top 12 and a final berth.
But having improved on their performances at this year’s European Games and last year’s European Championships, where they received 75.3000 and 75.1000 respectively, Randall insisted they could have few complaints with their result in Russia.
“That’s one of the best swims we’ve done so we’re really happy,” said Randall. “We achieved lots of the corrections we were set in the warm-up and the goals we wanted to reach throughout the swim.
“It’s been really hard because we have no financial support for ourselves to support getting to training, physiotherapy or sports science so we’re behind everyone else in that respect.
“But competing here makes us really want to come back and show that GB are still going and we are still pushing. We’ve not stopped just because we’ve lost all our funding.”
The British girls are set to learn a new routine as they aim to reach the Rio 2016 Olympic Games through next year’s qualification competition.
And Cowie admitted both girls are looking forward to learning a routine choreographed specifically for them.
“Next year we’re going to learn and swim two new routines which hopefully be better suited to us,” said Cowie.
“At the moment we’re swimming the two Olympic routines that Jenna and Olive swam before us.
“So if we swim a routine that really suits us and we can get really into it, then hopefully we can go to the Rio qualifiers and do well.”