Twenty-year-old University of Bath student Freyja Prentice won the first Modern Pentathlon World Cup medal of her career when she took bronze at Sassari in Italy today (Saturday).

It means the young Brit continued her impressive record of finishing in the top-10 in each of the six rounds of the World Cup in which she has competed to date. Her previous best was a fifth place at the Cairo World Cup in March last year.

Prentice had performed well across the disciplines in today’s final at the second World Cup of the year, but still had to climb from 10th place going into the run/shoot to achieve a podium finish.

She said: “It was so close today. I just decided I had to focus on myself.

“It’s my first World Cup medal today and I just wanted it so badly,” added the University of Bath Biology student, ranked number 10 in the world and second in the junior world rankings.

Prentice became the second British woman to win a World Cup medal this year following Mhairi Spence’s silver at the opening World Cup in the USA in February. Prentice missed that competition with a chest infection.

Spence ended the day in 16th place today with Beijing 2008 Olympian Katy Livingston finishing 18th.

The trio train at the Pentathlon GB High Performance Centre at the University of Bath. While Prentice is a second year student at the University, both Spence and Livingston are Coach Education and Sports Development graduates.

Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB Performance Director, said: “They all fought well today, but it was a fantastic step up for Freyja.

“This shows the depth we have within the British team,” he added. “But wherever we are at this point, there is still another step up to the top.”

It was Prentice, originally from Aberdeen, that set the early pace for the Brits at her first World Cup of the year and only the sixth of her career.

She won 25 of her 35 fencing bouts to score 1000 pentathlon points. Her performance was only bettered by Egypt’s Aya Medany with 26 victories.

Spence and Livingston were just outside the top-10. Spence’s 20 wins were worth 880 points putting her joint 11th, while Livingston’s 18 wins earned 832 pentathlon points for joint 15th place.

Prentice remained the top Brit after the swim, but dropped a place down the overall rankings to third. She clocked a 200m freestyle time of 2:20.21 to add 1120 points to her overall score.

Spence and Livingston both climbed four places up the leaderboard. Spence’s time of 2:14.90 was her best time of the year. It was the 13th fastest overall and added 1184 points to her total to push her up to seventh overall. Livingston was the quickest of the Brits. Her time of 2:14.20 was the 11th fastest time in the pool. It added 1192 points to her total and saw her climb to 11th overall going into the ride.

Medany continued to lead the field, with Poland’s Joanna Gomolinska in second spot.

But it was Spence who led the British challenge after the ride. She was one of nine athletes to have a clear round within the allotted time to score the perfect 1200 pentathlon points in the riding arena.

That saw her move to fourth place overall, 40 points – or 10 seconds behind the new leader, Gomolinska going into the run/shoot.

Prentice meanwhile dropped 124 points from the maximum in the ride to slip down the field to 10th overall, starting the run/shoot 27 seconds behind the leader.

Livingston, started the run/shoot in 16th, 42 seconds behind Gomolinska, after taking 1112 pentathlon points from the ride on a tricky horse.

It looked like being a close finish to the second World Cup of the year, with the top-23 of the 36 finalists separated by just a minute going into the run/shoot.

Prentice had climbed to fifth place halfway round the first run, but Spence dropped out of contention for the medals after the second shoot.

Prentice arrived at the range in fifth place for the third and final shoot but got away in third and held on to her place to take a well earned first World Cup medal of her career. Her time of 11:56.08 was the seventh fastest run/shoot of the day.

Gold went to Russia’s Donata Rimsaite, who climbed from sixth going into the run/shoot, while Anastasiya Prokopenko of Belarus worked her way from 19th to take silver.

Modern Pentathlon World Cup 2 women’s results

Gold: Donata Rimsaite (Russia)  – 5388 points
Silver: Anastasiya Prokopenko (Belarus) – 5368 points
Bronze: Freyja Prentice (Great Britain) – 5332 points
16th: Mhairi Spence (Great Britain) – 5156 points
18th: Katy Livingston (Great Britain) – 5120 points

None of the quartet of British men qualified for Sunday’s final from the semis yesterday (Friday).