WEST Devon's Heather Fell added the Modern Pentathlon European Championships silver medal to her Olympic silver in Leipzig on Saturday – and her performance helped Great Britain win the team gold.
Fell produced an outstanding series in the final with her fastest swim of the year, she was the only rider to go clear in the equestrian arena, and then she rounded off the day with a strong run/shoot to secure second place on the podium in Germany.
It was her first individual medal at a senior international event since the new combined run/shoot was introduced to the sport at the beginning of the year.
To add to her achievement Fell, Katy Livingston and Mhairi Spence joined forces to win the team gold for Great Britain ahead of Russia and Hungary.
'It's been a terrible year, so I was pleased and a bit surprised today,' said the athlete from Merrivale, who now has her sights set firmly on the World Championships at Crystal Palace from August 13-17.
'I have been struggling with my fencing this year, but that was positive today and I felt as though it was going in the right direction again.
'I had my best swim of the year, a good ride and the combined event was probably my best one,' she added. "On the last run I thought I could get bronze, so I was really pleased to win silver. There's still room for improvement though.'
Heather, 26, was pipped to gold by nine seconds by France's Amelie Caze, the reigning world champion. Caze had gone into the combined run/shoot with a 34-second advantage over Hungary's Saralta Kovacs, with Britain's Katy Livingston in third place and Fell back in sixth.
Heather clawed her way up to second spot with two good runs and shoots but was overtaken by Russia's Evdokia Gretchichnikova in the final round of shooting.
But Heather used her running strength to overhaul the Russian on the final running leg, although she couldn't quite close the gap on Caze – who had made sure of gold by hitting five targets from five shots in her final shoot.
Fell's silver medal winning performance was a repeat of her finish at the Beijing 2008 Olympics as well as the 2007 European Championships and the 2008 World Cup final.