However, Britain will have a full complement of four women competing in Saturday's final, after Heather Fell (pictured below), Samantha Murray, Freyja Prentice and Mhairi Spence all came safely through today's semis.

It means all four will get the opportunity to battle it out for individual medals on Saturday (May 12) – and the chance to achieve the London 2012 Olympic qualifying standard.

Prentice is the only GB woman pentathlete to have achieved that standard to date, but is not guaranteed a place on the GB Olympic team.

With 77 women contesting the women's individual competitions, today's opening round was split into three semi-finals, so athletes had to secure a top-12 place in each semi to progress to the final.

Spence and Fell both qualified comfortably from semi-final B, with Spence crossing the line in fourth and Fell in eighth.

In semi-final C, Murray set a personal best of 2min 08.78sec in the swim and then came 11th in the fencing to go into the run/shoot in sixth.

Despite having to change the battery that powers the pistol's laser during the shoot after it failed, she came home in ninth.

Prentice started just one place and seven seconds behind her team mate.

Her 2:24.40 200m freestyle swim put her 16th, but she fenced well to go into the run/shoot in seventh.


She climbed two places in the run/shoot to end the day in fifth.

Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB Performance Director, said: "They all qualified for the final and that's great news.

"It was a tough day, but they all deserve their places in the final.

"They all looked good today, although they have room for improvement in certain disciplines and they will all start from zero again in the final on Saturday."

The World Championships are the final qualification event for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

British athletes must medal in the individual competitions to achieve the qualifying standard.

Thereafter, the only other opportunity to qualify for the Games is through the Olympic ranking list.

So far, Britain's Jamie Cooke and Freyja Prentice have achieved the London 2012 qualifying standard, but with a maximum of two places per gender per nation available, neither are guaranteed a place on the team.

The scores achieved by Fell, Murray and Spence on Saturday will count towards the team competition.

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