IT was a great weekend for West Devon pentathlete Heather Fell who earned a magnificent silver medal at Chengdu in China on Saturday.

Britain's Beijing 2008 Olympic silver medallist from Merrivale won her first modern pentathlon World Cup medal of the year by taking silver in Chengdu, China.

It means British women have won medals at all four World Cups this season following Mhairi Spence's silver and bronze at World Cup 1 and 3, and Freyja Prentice's bronze at World Cup 2.

Heather went into the final discipline, the run/shoot in third place, 45 seconds behind leader Sarolta Kovacs, Hungary's world junior champion. But she shot and ran well, taking the lead during the second 1k run.

The 28-year-old former world number one went into the final shoot neck-and-neck with Ekaterina Khuraskina, but the Russian was quicker away from the shooting range and ran strongly to cross the finishing line six seconds ahead of Heather. Fell's run/shoot time of 11 mins 55.39secs was the fourth fastest of the day.

Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB performance director, said: "Heather has been really focussed in training and I'm pleased with how she handled it today.

'This is a really positive result for her.'

Heather Fell and fellow GB teammate Prentice led the British challenge early on. The pair each won 20 of their 35 fencing bouts for joint seventh place. Fell went to the ride in fourth. Her time of 2mins 15.55secs was the seventh quickest. She kept up her challenge by going clear in the riding arena in the allotted time making her one of eight riders to bag the full 1200 riding points. That put her third going into the run/shoot – 208 point and 45 seconds behind event leader Kovacs, Hungary's world junior champion and just two seconds behind another Hungarian, Adrienn Toth.

Despite Fell's best efforts and a total of 5,396pts the gold went to Russia's Khuraskina on 5.420.

The competition in China is the final chance for athletes to try to qualify for the World Cup final in London in July. Qualification is based on World Cup standings. Qualifiers for the event will be confirmed shortly.

Britain's modern pentathlon team train at the Pentathlon GB High Performance Centre at the University of Bath.

Heather is now looking to the World Cup Final in London, July 9-10; the European Championships, Medway, Kent, 28 July-1 August before the World Championships in Moscow, Russia, September 8-14 — all leading up to the Olympics in London 2012.