Tomblin and Thorpe win Great Britain’s first medal in Singapore

Stepping out to perform an upgraded in difficulty version of the ‘light and darkness’ themed Mixed Duet Free routine the pair debuted at the Xi’an Super final, Ranjuo Tomblin and Izzy Thorpe received a total score of 322.0583 to finish third and record Great Britain’s opening medal of these world championships and first ever in the history of this event.

Having narrowly missed out on the podium with a fourth-place finish in Wednesday’s Mixed Duet Tech event, the British pair delivered a striking piece of opening deck work before diving in and producing a crisp routine in the water that was fully deserving of it’s ranking among the world’s best – ultimately finishing just 1.798 points off gold in a close scoring top-three.

This bronze medal is Tomblin’s first ever silverware at a world championships – with this his second appearance having debuted at Fukuoka 2023 - while for Thorpe this marked her maiden worlds medal in a Mixed event following previous successes with Olympic silver medal duet partner, Kate Shortman, on the global stage.

“I feel really happy, especially after the Tech Duet on Wednesday where we came in fourth and were a little bit disappointed with that – but we manage to turn it around and come back with the bronze today,” said Thorpe.

“I think with the Mixed Duet it’s very different to the other events, you get to express yourself a lot more which is really good and I’ve enjoyed that.”

Speaking of their chemistry and favourite elements of the routine, Tomblin said:

“I feel like our mindset as athletes are very similar, we’re very focused hard workers and great friends too.

“For me the deck work [is one of my favourite parts] as it’s very emotional and passionate which sets the tone for the routine we’re about to do.”

With Thorpe adding:

“We get on so well both inside and outside of the pool, so that’s really helped our partnership. It’s all come together quite quick really, so that relationship has helped us when it comes to nailing choreography.”

“I think the biggest challenge has been the amount of time we’ve had to get ready for the routines, as Ranjuo has been to a lot of competitions this year – every world cup and junior Europeans so he’s had a very busy schedule, while I’ve been doing my third year at university so we didn’t actually have a lot of time together leading up to this competition but we’ve managed to do really quite well with the time we had.”

Ahead of the Mixed Duet events, Tomblin had challenged in and around the medal positions with his individual performances in the Men’s Solo Free and Solo Tech in Singapore – placing fourth and fifth respectively.

Robyn Swatman and Eve Young meanwhile made a first world championships final with their ‘She Wolves’ themed Women’s Duet Free routine. A clean swim in the preliminaries helped them achieve their place inside the top-12, but with a single basemark noted against them for the opening acro-pair move in the finals, Swatman and Young were unable to further progress their score with the judges.

Earlier in the week the pair additionally ranked 25th overall in the Women’s Duet Tech.

Loya Cencki was Britain’s first athlete in the competition pool as she stepped out for the Women’s Solo Tech on Friday 18th July.

“I was really nervous at the beginning because this is my first event so like I didn't know how the call room was going to look and stuff,” she commented after her 21st place ranking in the prelims.

“I feel like it went really well for the first time swimming at a big competition like this - I've tried to focus on my hybrids and I really tried to express my best.”

Joining up with Katherine Boitsidis, Jessica Hinxman, Holly Hughes, Pia Lanham, Sophie Rowney, Magdalena Townsend and Cara Zeidler for Team events, the group which had competed at last month’s European junior championships continued their progress with a strong showing of their developing ‘Warrior’ Team Free and ‘Rio Carnival’ Team Tech routines in which they placed 14th and 17th overall on the world stage.

“I think it’s good that we all get to do it together as it’s everyone’s first ever world championships. It’s been a great opportunity to learn from other countries we don’t normally get to compete against and build on new ideas for our future routines,” said Hughes.

“We’re going to come back hungry for more, we’ve learnt lots of things and I can’t wait to come back for another competitive season,” added Townsend.

Stream live free-to-air coverage of the World Aquatics Championships 2025 taking place in Singapore at www.aquaticsgb.com/live.