Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe win Team GB’s first Olympic medal in artistic swimming

Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe made artistic swimming history after securing Team GB’s first-ever Olympic medal in the sport with silver in Paris.

The Bristol based duo stunned the crowd with their rise of the phoenix free duet routine, earning them a score of 294.5084 – the highest of all the 17-strong field.

It lifted them to a total of 558.5367 after it was combined with yesterday’s technical routine to see them rise from fourth to second in the overall standings to make history for the nation.

Great Britain’s previous best finish the sport was the fourth place achieved by Caroline Holmyard and Carolyn Wilson in Los Angeles in 1984 and the duet were delighted to make their mark on the highest stage.

“Honestly, it feels like a dream,” Shortman said to the BBC before breaking down into tears. “I didn’t want to cry, but I am. We’ve worked so hard to get here.

“Thank you because we’ve been some really hard times and it just makes me really emotional thinking about it.”

Thorpe explained some of the struggles they’ve been through after their 14th place finish in Tokyo and was delighted that the pair never gave up on their Olympic dream

She added: “After Tokyo we didn’t know if we were going to carry on. We didn’t know what the future looked like for us. We were getting the same results all the time, we weren’t progressing. It was really disheartening.

“But then we had this massive rule change and I’m so glad that we carried on. We were at a really low point in both our careers, but we had each other the whole way and I’m so glad we carried on.”

‘Hopefully it’s inspired a lot of athletes’

The duet had a long wait, swimming 15^th of the 17 teams as they watched a talented field set the standard at Paris’ Aquatics Centre.

But as always, Shortman and Thorpe weren’t phased and put on another basemark free routine to score a massive 203.7085 for elements and 90.8000 to surge them into the lead, just ahead of Austria’s Alexandri twins – Anna-Marie and Eirini-Marina – by around three points.

That total was almost 50 points higher than the 247.2626 that won them world bronze at the World Aquatics Championships in February and meant that the pair were guaranteed a medal with just the Netherlands and China left to swim.

The Dutch duo of Begje de Brouwer and Noortje de Brouwer – who were just 0.7 points ahead of the British pair – went first and scored 293.6897, meaning their total was 0.1404 off Shortman and Thorpe’s overall total.

China’s Liuyi and Qianyi Wang had a slightly lower difficulty routine but performed well to maintain their impressive lead from the technical duet to take gold with an overall score of 566.4783.

The silver though marked a remarkable moment for two best friends that started swimming together when they were eight-years-old that wanted to thank everyone that had supported them along the way.

Shortman said: “They’re so many people to thank for this result so thank you to everyone.

Thorpe added: “We have to train so many hours a day, we don’t have the time to get part-time job or a full-time job which a lot of other sports can do alongside it so for us it wasn’t really a sustainable career choice.

“But now we’ve got funding from UK Sport, which just helps so much and we can pursue it as a career.

“We’ve spent so many years together training, we have gone through some really hard times in training for it to all be worth it now is just incredible.

“We started getting funding this season and we’ve done so well this year. We’re just really lucky that we’ve been recognised and been given that support to do this for the sport.

“Hopefully [the future] is really bright, hopefully it’s inspired a lot of athletes to start or carry on. Winning a silver medal is a big boost for GB.”