Shortman and Thorpe win historic artistic swimming medal

Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe won Great Britain's first ever Olympic medal in artistic swimming and said their duet silver medal was worth all the "really hard times" they had gone through because of poor funding.

The childhood friends, whose mothers also used to compete as a pair in the sport, performed their Rising Phoenix routine to score 294.5085 - for a combined total of 558.5367 in Paris.

China's Liuyi Wang and Qianyi Wang took gold (566.4783) and the Netherlands' Bregje de Brouwer and Noortje de Brouwer won bronze (558.3963).

Shortman and Thorpe, who said their UK Sport funding was only reinstated less than a year ago, had sat fourth after Friday's Big Ben-themed technical routine before delivering a high-energy free routine.

They looked stunned when they saw their names on top of the leaderboard with two teams still to compete, knowing they were guaranteed a medal.

They covered their mouths in disbelief before the hugs, and tears flowed while a sizeable Union Jack-waving contingent in the Paris Aquatics Centre erupted in celebration.

Asked by BBC Sport to describe how they were feeling, they replied - like their performance - in perfect unison: "On top of the world."

Shortman then added: “I can’t even fathom it right now, can’t put it into words, it’s just an incredible dream come true really.”

From 'unsustainable' career to silver medal

Shortman and Thorpe finished 14th at Tokyo 2020 and UK Sport funding for the sport was cut for the next Olympic cycle.

Thorpe's mother Karen, who is also one of their coaches, has spoken of how the pair have had to support themselves with coaching jobs here and there when they should have been resting as they were training full-time, and over the years they have done much of their training in a community swimming pool.

“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," Thorpe said

"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."

Soon after they started to receive funding again in September 2023, the pair went on to win two medals at the World Championships in February this year.

They hope their Olympic medal will provide a further boost to the sport and inspire the next generation.

"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," Thorpe said.

Carrying on mothers' legacy to achieve British first

Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe hugged each other in disbelief after realising they had won a medal

Shortman and Thorpe, who are both from Bristol, have known each other since they were little and have been swimming together since the age of nine.

Thorpe's mum Karen competed alongside Shortman's mother Maria in the 1980s and narrowly missed out on qualifying for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Shortman told the BBC earlier this year that she and Thorpe hoped to "carry on the legacy" of their mothers in Paris.

They have not only done that, but also made history.

Britain's previous best finish in artistic swimming - formerly synchronised swimming - was the fourth place achieved by Caroline Holmyard and Carolyn Wilson in Los Angeles in 1984, when the event made its Olympic debut.

Their Olympic medal has been brewing for a while, having become the first Britons to win a duet medal at the World Championships earlier this year - where they took a silver and bronze.

Their rise has been helped by an overhaul of the sport's scoring system last year, which made it less subjective and played more to their technical strengths.

There are now two judging panels, looking at the elements of a routine and artistic impression, while the pairs declare the difficulty of their routine themselves before swimming.

The previous system had 15 judges who scored across every aspect.

Shortman had considered quitting the sport before the change and the duo's Rising Phoenix routine is a tribute to the scoring system change, which has now yielded the reward of an Olympic medal.

They are not sure how they will celebrate the success yet, with Thorpe saying "it's all very overwhelming" at the moment, although she has managed to hug her mum already.

"Probably just stare at the medal, cry, touch the medal," Shortman said with a laugh.