Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe excited at chance to realise Olympic dream

Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe say they are excited to be given the chance to realise their Olympic dream.

The teenagers have been officially chosen as the Great Britain duet bidding to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 games.

They will be competing in the duet free and technical events at the Junior European Championships in Prague, Czech Republic, between 18-23 June before travelling to Gwangju, South Korea, for the World Championships in July.

It has been a magnificent year for Shortman and Thorpe so far with a number of personal bests scores – and with the Olympics their goal, they are looking to make further improvements over the next 12 months.

Shortman said: “It’s so exciting that Izzy and I have been officially selected to challenge for a place at the Tokyo Olympics – it’s one step closer to our dream.

“It makes everything seem real and is inspiring us to keep working hard for Olympic qualification.”

Thorpe added: “We have already had an amazing year full of exciting opportunities and competitions. We have competed in France, Japan, Russia and Spain and each time we have improved our duet scores.

“We have two competitions left this season, the Junior Europeans and the World Championships, and it’s important that we keep working on the feedback to push those scores up and demonstrate that we have room for further growth.

Incredible experience

“The Junior Europeans is our last competition as juniors and we really want to demonstrate how much we have improved since last year’s Junior Europeans in Finland.

“We will be aiming to peak at the Worlds and have a two-week camp in France and Japan to get competition ready.”

For Shortman, this year has also seen solo success on the international stage as she won two bronze medals in the eighth leg of the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series in Barcelona.

She broke the 85 points barrier in the solo free competition for the first time as she took third place with a score of 85.6000 – only 0.0333 behind Japan’s Mako Sawada (85.6333), who was the silver medallist.

And Shortman, who will be competing in the solo competitions at the European Junior Championships and World Championships, also claimed the bronze medal in the solo technical competition with a total of 82.4228.

She said: “My free solo scores have increased at each competition this year and to break 85 points was an amazing step.

“It was also an incredible experience to stand on the international podium alongside Ona Carbonell at the Barcelona Open.

“The next year is going to move very quickly and we working hard to be the best we can be to achieve our Olympic dream.”