Murray leads as remainder of final postponed by typhoon

23 August 2013

Samantha Murray, Britain’s London 2012 Olympic silver medallist, sits on top of the leaderboard in the women’s final at the Modern Pentathlon World Championships in Chinese Taipei. But she will have to wait until tomorrow (Saturday) to press home her advantage after Typhoon Trami led to the postponement of the ride and run/shoot today.

After hours of heavy rain, organisers decided to postpone the final elements of the competition for the safety of the athletes and horses. They are now scheduled to run tomorrow, along with the men’s final.

Murray, a University of Bath French and Politics graduate, goes into the ride with a 48-point advantage over France’s Elodie Clouvel after winning 21 of her 34 fencing bouts for 928 pentathlon points – the fourth best performance of the day. She followed that up with the best swimming time of the day – 2:10.58, to add 1236 points to her total.

Reigning world champion Mhairi Spence, a Coach Education and Sports Development graduate, goes into day two of the final in 10th place. Her 20 victories on the fencing piste was the joint fifth best performance earning 904 points. She added another 1144 points to her tally with a 200m freestyle time of 2:18.28, the 15th fastest time of the day.

Biology graduate Freyja Prentice and Kate French, a Sports Performance graduate, are also both in the top half of the 36-strong field. Prentice is 15th after matching Spence’s fencing performance and clocking 2:24.58 in the pool to add 1068 points to her total. French is 18th – she won 18 fencing bouts for 856 points and followed that with 2:21.72 in the pool, worth 1100 points.

Great Britain are also currently in pole position in the women’s team competition. The performances of Murray, Spence and French count towards the team event, and Britain currently lead the field from Ukraine, with China in third.

Tomorrow Jamie Cooke and Nick Woodbridge are also due to compete in the men’s final.

The British team train at the Pentathlon GB high performance centre at the University of Bath.

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