Kate Shortman Izzy Thorpe Tech Duet Paris 2024

Shortman and Thorpe in medal hunt after Tech Duet

9 Aug 2024

Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe put themselves in medal contention ahead of the artistic swimming Free Duet final after their Tech Duet routine on Friday night.

Kate and Izzy - who made history in February by winning Britain's first ever duet medals at a World Championships - were superb in performing their Big Ben-themed routine, which brought that historic silver in Doha.

With a 40.100 degree of difficulty, they recorded a score of 264.0282 to leave them less than 0.7 points off Bregje de Brouwer and Noortje de Brouwer of the Netherlands in third, thanks to a score of 165.5282 for their elements and an artistic impression score of 98.500, with no base marks applied.

"We're really happy with that. We kind of looked at bronze and we're like 0.7 off that bronze medal, so it's definitely in reach for tomorrow. I think that we're going to make a few changes ahead of that competition and we're just going to do all we can to try to fight for those medals," said Thorpe.

The atmosphere for the first half of the artistic swimming duet competition at the Olympic Aquatics Centre was incredible, with swathes of Union flags and massive noise for the Team GB duo.

On that, Shortman added: "Honestly, I've never felt anything like it. It was just something I'll never forget in my whole life. It was such an incredible feeling. Like I didn't really hear it before we swam because I was just so focused. But then afterwards when I looked up and like my whole family's there, my boyfriend, I could see everyone supporting us, it was just incredible."

The Free Duet final begins at 6.30pm BST today (Saturday 10th August), with Kate and Izzy going 15th out of 17th in the start order.

Where can I watch?

The BBC will be 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 will also be broadcasting every minute of the Olympic Games but these channels require a subscription fee.