Heather Fell, Britain’s modern pentathlon silver medallist from the 2008 Olympics, is proud to come from Devon - and proud to promote anything else that comes from that county. Which explains why she has recently been supporting the launch of a new beer from her local Dartmoor Breweries, entitled Legend.

This 27-year-old from Princeton, near Tavistock, is already something of a local legend following her exploits in Beijing.

But as she turns her attention to this weekend’s World Cup event at Medway Park - she was eighth in her semi-final today to reach Sunday’s final - she is patently a less-than-happy bunny. And Devon is partly to blame.

Nobody could have accused Fell of talking up her chances when she attended a press call earlier this week to help publicise a competition that marks the official opening of the £11 million Medway Park centre, and which is being billed as the first global sporting event to be held in Medway.

She made it clear at the official conference that she had not been able to train effectively since finishing fifth in the first of this season’s World Cup events in Mexico last month, a state of affairs that had been exacerbated by a mild virus.

And she looked fed up.

As Medway Park staff busied themselves putting up banners and adding the final touches to a stadium that, six months ago, was scarcely more than a building site, Fell stood on the track with her GB hoodie pulled up over her head and told me that, if she had the choice, she wouldn’t be competing this weekend.

Fell has always been the most independent of Britain’s modern pentathletes. Having won the world junior title in 2003 and taken her place at the sport’s national training base in Bath two years later, a serious problem with shin splints effectively put her out of the running for 16 months, and she was reluctantly released by the man who is still the British team’s Performance Director, Jan Bartu.

Fell’s reaction to these circumstances defined her as an athlete. She went home to Princeton, got a part-time job as a barmaid in her local pub, The Plume of Feathers, and dedicated herself to the task of getting back to fitness on her home turf.

The task was completed, and with a glorious Olympic result.

Last season was less spectacular, although she helped earn Britain team silver at the World Championships held at Crystal Palace.

At this early stage of the 2010 season, however, Fell maintains she is less than confident . "I’m struggling a little at the moment," she confessed, adding that she has found it tricky adjusting to spending the bulk of her training time back at the World Class Performance centre in Bath, where she is under the guidance of the women’s head coach, Istvan Nemeth, rather than in Devon with her long-time coach Robin Brew.

"I’ve not got the best relationship with my coach at the moment," she said. "Maybe the best way of putting it is that I’m really struggling with the coaching set-up.

"I’m now training more at Bath, and things need to step up, and I’m ready to step it up. But something is missing and it’s quite hard to put my finger on it.

"I had a really good relationship with my coach at home, who was my swimming coach  but also understood my running and understood me and how I worked and what I needed, even though he wasn’t an overall pentathlon coach.

"And I’m kind of missing that guidance at the moment. I feel a bit lost with my training because I don’t have someone that I can go to speak to. At the moment I don’t feel 100 per cent but there’s no one there telling me, ‘Oh, you should train’, or ‘You shouldn’t train’.

"I still try to spend as much time as I can in Devon but they are not keen for me to do that. I’ve been in Bath more often than at home recently. But it’s now starting to show because my times should be getting better and they are not.

"It’s early to tell competition-wise, but I feel I haven’t got the base behind me I need to get me through the season and I’m hoping i will have time to get that base for later in the season.

"It’s not impossible to ring Robin, but I feel that coaches are incredibly busy all the time and you kind of feel you can’t just take, you’ve got to give a bit, and he’s not getting anything back. It’s quite a hard position only to ring him when I’m in trouble.

"I still want to give it a go up in Bath because in theory its great facility and set-up. But having a single programme for a group of people who are all very different... doesn’t always work."

What is adding to the pressure Fell is clearly feeling at the moment is the abundance of talent Britain is continuing to enjoy in an event which has yielded a gold, a silver and two bronze medals since it was introduced to the Olympics in 2000.

The British women’s team currently has at least seven world class performers to call upon. And although both the men’s and women’s teams were allowed to field up to 12 competitors for this weekend’s World Cup, as host - with the women getting eight competitors through to the final - the tariff falls to four for other World Cup events or the world championships.

As for the Olympics - well, there you get just two entries. Even if you are the host nation.

"We have the biggest problem because we are such a strong nation," Fell says. "For the Hungarians it’s just the same three women. The French have just one top girl so she goes to everything. The Germans have three girls who come to everything, same with the Poles. The Russians - the top two stay the same, the bottom ones change.

"For most of the countries it’s the same athletes at every World Cup, whereas when we went to Mexico for this season’s opening World Cup people were coming up to us and saying: ‘Where’s Mhairi [Spence]? Where’s Katy?’  and it was ‘Oh no. They’re coming to the next one.’ ‘Oh. And why are you not doing that one?’ ‘Because there’s too many of us.’

"We have to fight for it. It’s brilliant from the coaching perspective, and it’s great for British pentathlon as well."

The word “but” is not spoken; only inferred...

Fell is right, of course. Having such a wealth of talent can only be good for Britain’s prospects.

( Medal prospects?  Tick. Continued UK Lottery funding? Tick.)

But as London 2012 looms ever closer, you feel there is some urgent fine tuning required for Britain to get the best out of a young woman who has already indicated that she has the attitude and talent of a champion.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames