Mhairi Spence helped Great Britain to a team gold medal at the World Pentathlon Championships in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, to complete her rehabilitation after last year’s bitter Olympic experience.
The Inverness athlete and Inverurie’s Freyja Prentice formed two-thirds of the GB team with Lancashire’s Olympic silver medallist Samantha Murray also counting as GB finished ahead of China and Ukraine.
Spence, who finished well out of medal contention at London 2012, did, however, lose her individual world crown which she had held for 15 months at the end of an unprecedented week which saw the championships severely disrupted by Typhoon Trami, meaning the women’s competition ran for four days instead of two.
With all the disruption, Spence could only finish 17th with 5,088 points after being in contention going into the final day.
Kate French, not included in the team event, was top British performer in 10th (5,156 points), with Murray 14th (5,124 points) and Prentice an excellent 15th (5,112 points) after an injury-ravaged season.
Lithuania’s Laura Asadauskaite, who came from 19th to first in the combined run-shoot, claimed gold (5,312 points) to add the world title to her Olympic title.
In the men’s individual event, Nick Woodbridge took the silver, Britain’s first men’s individual medal at a World Championships for 20 years, following Richard Phelps’ gold in 1993.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet, but it feels good,” said Woodbridge, whose season has been hampered by injury. His previous best performance of the year had been a 16th place at the Rio World Cup in March.
Justinas Kinderis made it a Lithuanian double by taking gold. Jamie Cooke was fifth for Britain.
Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB performance director, said: “What a day! It’s been a really tough competition for the girls, but they proved they’re the best team in the world by winning the World Championships team tittle in consecutive years and the Europeans this year.
“Ahead of the championships, I was looking for a couple of top-10 finishes, so to have three top-10 finishes, a team gold and an individual silver says everything.”