Expectation versus reality does not come much starker than Kate Shortman’s 2023.
The 21-year-old artistic swimmer started the year questioning if it was worth continuing, even with new judging changes set to level the playing field.
And she ended her season by becoming Britain’s first-ever World medallist in the discipline with bronze in the women’s solo free routine.
“At the start of the year, I was feeling quite demotivated, and I didn't know if my head was truly in it,” she explained.
“Because I was thinking, it's always going to be the same, I don't think the rule change will make a difference, the rankings are always very similar.
“And I was just kind of thinking, have I got to the end of the road here with everything I can achieve? Have I already achieved my best?
“All those sorts of things were getting on top of a few of us, and it was quite demotivating.
🥉 Britain's FIRST EVER World Championship medal in artistic swimming!
— Team GB (@TeamGB) July 19, 2023
Bravo Kate Shortman 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/ZMdeHlCNhn
“But with the new rule change, and with everything that's happening, I can firmly say, I love the sport more than ever.
“I'm so glad that we all pushed through those times because it's made us stronger as a team and it's just renewed our love for the sport.
“We can look back and compare it now to where we were then and it's just radical, the differences is incredible.”
The scoring system for artistic swimming has recently been completely overhauled to become more scientific and less subjective.
Routine elements are scored against an overall degree of difficulty, while artistic impression judges will award scores for choreography and musicality, performance, and transitions.
Shortman had never finished higher than 10th at World Championships prior to the rule change, but finished just behind Yuniko Inui of Japan and Vasiliki Alexandri of Austria to claim an historic bronze.
At Tokyo 2020, Shortman finished 14th in the women’s duet event alongside childhood best friend Izzy Thorpe before they went on to claim bronze at this year’s European Games.
Beatrice Cross and Ranjuo Tomblin had earlier made history by winning Great Britain’s first-ever artistic swimming medal at the Games with Technical Mixed Duet bronze also coming third in the Free category.
For Shortman, while the scoring changes have reinvigorated her love for the support, it has also required a sharper mental focus with one wrong move spelling disaster.
She explained: “It's so much more about precision and accuracy now, which is one of the hardest things about the sport, because it's very disorientating.
“You don't have goggles on, you can't hear the music that well, you're trying to stay in pattern with someone else if you're in a team or duet event.
“And obviously you need to stay in time with the music with the other person, so it is quite a disorientating sport and then to add that extra risk with the precision and the accuracy.
“It is really scary, it does up the nerves just before you swim, if you make one mistake or one slip base mark, the whole thing drops.”
Shortman, who trains in Bath alongside Olympic swimmers like Tom Dean and Freya Anderson, relished the opportunity to be surrounded by athletes from other aquatic disciplines at the World Championships, believing that artistic swimming combines elements of all of them.
She will hope to be back with the wider Great Britain swimming team at Paris 2024, but is predicting a straight shootout with Israel, Greece and the Netherlands for three quota spots for the Olympic Games.
If she and Thorpe make it, Shortman believes anything is possible.
Read more: Sporty AF (And Female): One Team, Team GB
“We are dying to get an Olympic medal,” she admitted. “We are really, really are pushing for an Olympic medal now.
“We're absolutely going to work our socks off this season. We've had an absolutely reinvigorated burst of motivation, and we can see that it's definitely in our sights.
“It is not at all impossible that we could get any medal, not just a bronze, but any medal at the Olympic Games.
“We're so excited and we can't wait we're like ‘Bring it on!’”
Sportsbeat 2023