The excitement of the Olympics has been brought home to Westbury on Trym with glorious silver medals around the necks of Izzy Thorpe and Kate Shortman, childhood friends whose success at Paris 2024 has earned them a place in artistic swimming history, securing the sport’s first-ever Olympic medal for Great Britain.
The swimmers were welcomed back to Bristol by proud family, friends and neighbours after their success on August 10.
Former Clifton High School pupils who have swum together since the age of eight, their success is a culmination of years of gruelling training and commitment. Izzy, 23, who is studying sports rehabilitation at UWE and Kate, 22, a student of International Management and Modern Languages (French) at University of Bath, train relentlessly at Hengrove Leisure Centre, up to 10 hours a day, six days a week, with a regime that also includes yoga, gymnastics and video analyses, as well as spending minutes at a time submerged.
They are following their mothers, Maria Shortman and Karen Thorpe, who competed internationally as synchronised swimmers in the 1980s, before the sport became known as artistic swimming. Karen Thorpe is now the GB team performance director.
Izzy and Kate pair made their Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, reaching 14th place, but this led to struggles over lack of funding that made them wonder whether to carry on. However, they never gave up on their Olympic dream and once funding was reinstated, went on to make history for Great Britain at European and World championship levels before qualifying for Paris.
In fourth place entering the last day of the event, an incredible rising phoenix-inspired routine earned them the highest free routine score of the competition and catapulted them into silver medal position, just eight points below the gold medal-winning Chinese pair.
Tears flowed and Union Jack flags flew from the sizeable GB contingent as the stunned pair realised the extent of their achievement.
Asked by the BBC to describe how they felt, their perfectly synchronised response was: “on top of the world”.
Kate added: “I can’t even fathom it right now, can’t put it into words. It’s just an incredible dream come true really.”
Izzy and Kate hope that their success will provide a boost to the sport and inspire the next generation to pursue their dreams too.
“Hopefully the future is really bright,” said Izzy, “Hopefully it’s inspired a lot of athletes to start or carry on”.