Artisitc swimmers make friends with the fishes as they join Team GB

Two Team GB athletes marked their Olympic selection by swimming with a turtle named after Boris Johnson, writes Sportsbeat's Tom Harle.

Artistic swimmers Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe, both 23, are hoping to win Team GB’s first-ever medal in the sport at Paris 2024.

Their campaign began in the unlikely setting of the tropical reef tank at the Sea Life London Aquarium.

“It’s definitely the most rogue place I’ve ever swam,” admitted Shortman.

Shortman and Thorpe dived in with a range of species, including batfish and unicorn fish.

They made friends with turtles ‘Boris’ and ‘Dougie’, named after the former Mayor of London and McFly bass guitarist respectively.

Also in the mix were ‘Zebby’ the zebra shark and ‘Football’ the puffer fish, making for a unique experience for the two-time Olympic athletes.

“I’m not a massive fan of the sea so it was actually quite scary for me,” said Thorpe. “It was kind of terrifying at first. I’m not sure I’ll be volunteering again!”

Shortman added: “It was really fun and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. How many people get to swim at an aquarium?”

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, who alongside Thorpe, is one of more than 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme, allowing her to train full time, have access to the world’s best coaches and benefit from pioneering medical support.

“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.”

The bubbly Bristolians 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.

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