WEST Devon's Heather Fell had a great boost to her chances of a London Olympics place when she won a silver medal at the Modern Pentathlon World Cup Final in China on Saturday.

The Beijing 2008 Olympic silver medallist climbed from 10th place to second in the run/shoot in Chengdu to take silver, finishing 16 seconds behind Lithuania's Laura Asadauskaite.

It means Fell is likely to achieve the London 2012 Olympic qualifying standard via the Olympic ranking list. She will be the fourth British woman to achieve the standard.

Fell's teammates Mhairi Spence Samantha Murray, Freyja Prentice have already achieved the Olympic qualification standard but a maximum of two athletes per gender per nation can compete at the Olympic Games.

The West Devon athlete will hear on June 8 if she has a place when a selection meeting by British Olympic Association announces the GB modern pentathlon team for London 2012.

Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB Performance Director, said: "Heather had a smashing combined event today – she took a high quality tactical approach and it was a well deserved second place.

'It will be a great encouragement for her after the World Championships, when she didn't achieve her objectives.

Fell had gone into the third shoot in seventh place in Chengdu today, but left the range in sixth and then quickly chased down five of the athletes in front of her to secure her first medal of the year on the international stage.

Her last was also a silver in the fourth round of the 2011 World Cup, also in Chengdu a year ago.

Fell was 12th after the fencing, winning 18 of her 35 bouts and climbed to 11th after the swim, with a 200m freestyle time of 2mins 18.93 secs, the fourth fastest of the day.

She dropped 60 points from the maximum 1200 in the riding arena to go into the run/shoot in 10th place, 47 seconds behind gold winner Lithuania's event leader, Laura Asadauskaite and 31 seconds off second place.

Fell, the only GB woman in action in Chengdu was the last British woman to win a World Cup Final medal – she took silver in Portugal in 2008.