And for Britain’s team manager Dominic Mahony, Medway Park is already a winner before the event gets underway.

He saluted the efforts that had been made to prepare the £11 million venue, which will form a 2012 training camp for 13 Olympic and eight Paralympic sports, including modern pentathlon.
 
"The last time I came here was in October, when this place was a building site," said the team bronze medallist from the 1988 Olympics today.

"I wondered at the time how all the work could be done in time.

"But they have done it, and it’s absolutely fantastic.

"It will be a great competition for us this weekend, but also a legacy for the sport.

"As host nation, we can have 12 athletes in each event, rather than the normal amount of four.

"To be able to include so many of the athletes on our programme in an event of such quality is really special.

"After the first two rounds of the World Cup in Mexico and Cairo, we now have the first of the events in Europe, so all the European heavyweights will be here for the competition."

Hungary’s Adam Marosi (pictured), the current world number one and winner of last year’s World Championships at Crystal Palace, is among the entries, along with Germany’s reigning Olympic champion Lena Schoneborn.

The women’s competition also includes Qian Chen, China’s reigning world champion, and Russia’s Evdokia Gretchichnikova, who leads the 2010 World Cup series.
 
Jan Bartu, Britain's Performance Director, added that Victoria Tereshuk, the Ukraine athlete who took bronze behind Heather Fell in the 2008 Olympics, was making a return to the sport after taking a year off.

"She will be here this weekend, and I think that will make the competition harder," Bartu said.
 
Mhairi Spence and Katy Livingston - who won team silver along with Fell at last year’s World Championships - are among the British entries.
 
Spence said: "My preparations have gone really well and I’m just excited about competing now.

"I’m really looking forward to competing on home soil and knowing there will be lots of friendly faces there supporting me.

"My first aim is to get into the final, then anything can happen.

"It’s exciting to be competing somewhere new and the venue looks impressive."

Fell, too, is making it her first aim to get into the final, having suffered recently from a virus which has prevented her from training to full capacity at her base in Bath.

This week will provide a first experience of World Cup competition for 18-year-old James Myatt, who comes from Medway.

"I'm really looking forward to it," said Myatt, a member of Pentathlon GB’s World Class Development Programme.
 
“I’ve never competed at this level before, so I’ll be a little bit nervous, but I’ll just go and do the best I can. If I could make the final it"would be amazing.

"It will be good to get the experience of competing against the top guys in the world."

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