Silver for Fell as Brits secure three top-six finishes
British modern pentathlete Heather Fell added the World Cup Final silver medal in Portugal on Saturday (4 October) to her Beijing 2008 Olympic Games silver medal.
Compatriot Katy Livingston, seventh in Beijing, finished just outside the medals in fourth, with Mhairi Spence sixth in another outstanding day for British pentathletes.
The three Brits were among 28 athletes from 16 nations taking part in the competition in Caldas da Rainha. And they marked the end of a long, hard season by taking half of the top-sixth places.
The PentathlonGB high performance centre is based at the University of Bath.
Fell was sixth after the 10m air pistol shoot with a score of 185 from a possible 200 for 1156 modern pentathlon points.
Livingston was 16th (176 for 1048 points) and Spence 15th (177 for 1060 points). Fell’s 14 victories in the fencing earned her another 840 points, with both Livingston and Spence adding 872 points to their tally with 15 wins each.
Despite only recently returning to training after the Olympics, Fell produced the fastest time of the day for the 200m freestyle swim; 2:10.96; for another 1352 points to climb to second place overall with two events remaining.
Spence also produced a strong performance; her time of 2:13.36 was second fastest, earning 1320 points. Livingston also swam well, producing a 2:14.53, the seventh quickest time for 1308 points.
Latvia’s Elena Rublevska led the field at this stage. The Latvian was one of four riders to go clear in the show jumping for the maximum 1200 points, to keep her at the head of the leaderboard.
Lithuanian’s Donata Rimsaite also went clear to leapfrog Fell into second. Fell meanwhile, had 56 penalties to drop to third overall.
Spence and Livingston also produced solid performances in the equestrian element, Spence dropping just 20 points for 1180 and Livingston 56 for 1144.
Going into the final discipline, the 3k run, Rublevska had build up enough points to start 25 seconds ahead of Rimsaite, with Fell a further two seconds back. Rimsaite overtook Rublevska on the first lap and then led to the end to take gold, with Fell then also catching the Latvian to round off her terrific 2008 with a World Cup Final silver. She clocked a time of 10:41.76 for the run for 1156 points.
Livingston’s 10:49.63 took her into fourth – she couldn’t quite do enough to catch Rublevska and add a World Cup Final medal to her World Championship bronze earlier this year.
Spence’s 11:18.96 meant she finished the day in sixth overall; equalling her position at last year’s World Cup Final in Beijing.
Lena Schoneborn, Germany’s Beijing 2008 Olympic gold medallist, came ninth overall.
2008 World Cup Final results
Gold: Donata Rimsaite (LTU) 5692 points
Silver: Heather Fell (GBR) 5648 points
Bronze: Elena Rublevska (LAT) 5552 points
4th: Katy Livingston (GBR) 5496 points
6th: Mhairi Spence (GBR) 5440 points
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