Kate Shortman can hold her breath underwater for three minutes but barely takes one when asked the quality she admires most in Izzy Thorpe.
“It’s how resilient you are,” she says, addressing her childhood friend and fellow world silver medallist. “You’re so mentally strong. Sometimes I feel like I’ve hit my limit and I look at you and see you’ve got more to give, I’m going to keep going with you.”
It all started when, aged eight, they were thrown into a duet at Filton Leisure Centre - producing a perfectly synchronised routine at the first time of asking to rapturous applause.
This is no happy accident, however, being the second generation of Shortman-Thorpe duets. In the 1980s Shortman’s mother Maria swam with Karen Thorpe, now coaching and leading the team into Paris, coming up narrowly short of a place at the 1996 Olympics.
The two families are totally intertwined: they regularly do dinner together near home in Bristol and even own the same breed of dog.
“They’ve been getting on everyone’s nerves since they were eight years old because they’ve always been so enthusiastic about everything,” says Karen.
“I guess they’ve got a spark. The last few years have been really tough for them but they’ve never lost the passion for the sport and always wanted to show what they can actually do.”
The pair have always been there for each other, particularly during a tricky time after their maiden Olympic appearance in Tokyo, where they finished 14th.
Thorpe says: “Since Tokyo, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs with our identity, our place in the sport and what the future looks like.
“We’re very lucky we had each other to lean on and talk to and go through that experience together. We’ve come out the other side better than ever.”
Shortman and Thorpe have fuelled hopes for the Games with a string of superb performances in recent years.
Shortman won Britain’s first-ever medal at the World Championships with solo bronze in 2023 and the dynamic duo clinched silver and bronze at February’s Worlds to qualify for the Olympics. They also won last week’s Test Event at the Olympic Aquatics Centre in Paris.
There are plenty of reasons for the rapid rise: a welcome injection of National Lottery funding, a pioneering new coach in Yumiko Tomomatsu, refreshed mentalities and judging changes that bend in their favour.
“Is the ambition to win gold? Absolutely!” roared Shortman. “I think before Olympic gold almost seemed unattainable. It was more of a dream than a goal.
“Now, we’ve got our sights firmly set on it and we’re working as hard as possible to achieve it."
Few Olympic sports are as gruelling as theirs. Shortman and Thorpe train for 40 hours a week at Bristol South Swimming Pool, working from 8am to 6pm and then staying on for video analysis work to correct their mistakes for the next day.
They train in gymnastics, practise yoga and spend minutes at a time submerged: Shortman can hold her breath underwater for three minutes.
“I can’t stress how hard the sport is,” said Shortman. “Because it’s so glamorous, we’ve got our costumes on, it’s a distraction from the fact that this is a really, really hard sport.
Thorpe adds: “We’re supposed to be smiling so you can’t see the pain. The smile is fake.”
Sportsbeat 2024