Shortman and Thorpe claim landmark silver in Paris

Having made history in Doha earlier this year as the first British Duet to win artistic medals on the world championships stage, Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe inscribed their names into the annals of the sport once again with a stunning silver medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Entering the Duet Free just 0.7 points off the bronze medal position after the previous day's Technical routine, 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 combined total of 558.5367 to see them rise from fourth to second in the overall standings to make history for Team GB.

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, I didn’t want to cry, but I am. We’ve worked so hard to get here," said Shortman

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

Having first started swimming together at just eight-years-old, Thorpe spoke of the remarkable journey the pair have been on in recent years that see's them rise from a 14th place finish in Tokyo to Olympic silver medallists in Paris:

“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.”

The duet had endured a long wait, swimming 15th of the 17 teams as they watched a talented field set the standard at Olympic Aquatics Centre. Shortman and Thorpe weren’t phased and put on another basemark free routine to score a massive 203.7085 for elements and 90.8000 on artistic impression to surge them into the lead, with only the Chinese Duet ultimately surpassing their combined Tech and Free events total mark in the remaining swims to go.

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

"This Olympics had been just the most incredible experience you could ever imagine - my advice to any young athlete out there would be to go for it and never give up, follow your dreams because it is so worth pushing through the hard times to be here as part of the team and experience the atmosphere."

Thorpe adding: “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.”

Where can I watch?

The BBC has been covering the majority of the Games across BBC One and Two, the BBC Red Button and BBC iPlayer. You can find their coverage schedule by clicking here.

Discovery+/Eurosport has also been broadcasting every minute of the Olympic Games but these channels require a subscription fee.