IT was a frustrating time for West Devon's Heather Fell at the Modern Pentathlon World Championships in Moscow on Saturday.

The Olympic silver medalist finished 27th with Scot Mhairi Spence the best of the British finishing in eighth.

The results means none of the Brits were in the medals today – a podium finish at the World Championships would have achieved the London 2012 Olympic qualifying standard.

The new combined event format sees athletes first compete in fencing – when they take-on each other athlete in the field to one hit with each bout taking a maximum of one minute; a 200m freestyle swim; show jumping – when athletes get to meet their horses just 20 minutes before going into the riding arena; then the combined run/shoot – where athletes run 60m, shoot at five targets in up to 70 seconds, run 1k, shoot at another five targets in 70 seconds, run 1k, shoot at a further five targets in 70 seconds and then finish off with a final 1k run. All of the disciplines take place in one day.

Heather, riding a tricky horse, had two fences down and climbed to 22nd, starting a minute and 23 seconds off the lead. before eventually finishing 27th. However Heather from Merrivale enjoyed a better result as part of the GB women's team (along with Freyja Prentice, Mhairi Spence and Katy Burke), who finished fourth.

On Monday Heather teamed up with GB's Nick Woodbridge to finished seventh in the mixed relay competition.

'It's the first time we've competed in the new mixed relay at this level,' said Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB performance director. 'Heather and Nick got up to fifth place going into the combined event. They had good performances, but it wasn't enough to stay where they started I expected us to finish in the top-six or top-eight and that was about where we slotted in."

Heather and Nick Woodbridge started the day with 11th place in the fencing, but moved up the field to eighth overall with an impressive 2x100m freestyle relay swim. Their time of 1.56.84 was the second fastest.