Swim England Artistic Swimming

The home of artistic swimming in England

Shortman and Thorpe set new personal best as they impress on international stage

Teenagers Kate Shortman and Isabelle Thorpe produced another personal best performance as they impressed again on the international stage in Japan.

The Great Britain duet were competing in the fourth leg of the FINA Artistic Swimming World Series at the Tatsumi International Swimming Centre.

And they secured two top 10 finishes in the technical and free duet routines, while Shortman also finished seventh in her technical solo.

In the technical duet, Shortman and Thorpe were up against some of the strongest teams in the world with Russia, Japan, Italy, Austria, Canada and France all competing.

But they took seventh spot with a total of 83.2114 that left them 12.5782 behind the gold medallists Russia and only 6.3592 behind third-placed Italy.

The duo’s personal best score came in the free duet where they finished in 10th place.

Youngest competitors in senior field

Swimming their routine to Peter Gabriel’s Heroes, Shortman and Thorpe finished with a total of 84.1667 to improve their previous best score by two points.

Russia again took the gold medal with a score of 96.8333, 12.6666 ahead of the Great Britain duet.

In the solo event, Shortman’s total of 83.0956 was 10.9296 behind Spain’s Ona Carbonell who finished on 90.53178 to take the gold medal.

The results gave Karen Thorpe, manager of artistic swimming for Swim England and British Swimming, plenty of optimism ahead of a busy schedule for the duet.

She said: “They are still the youngest competitors in the senior field, which will stand them in good stead for the Junior European Championships later in the year.

“We now have a few days preparation before we head to St Petersburg for the LEN European Cup where we will focus our work on the details for both routines to hopefully improve our scores and rankings in that competition.”

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