Great Britain's women's team took bronze in the relay at the 2012 Modern Pentathlon World Championships.
Solid start for Britain at Modern Pentathlon World Championships
Great Britain's women's team opened their campaign at the 2012 Modern Pentathlon World Championships in Rome with a bronze medal in the relay.
The trio of Katy Burke, Kate French and Katy Livingston trailed Germany and China home in third place on the opening day of the championships in Italy.
With 12 teams contesting the relay, Britain were eighth after the fencing and climbed to fifth after the swimming.
With the third best riding performance of the day, the British trio went into the run/shoot in fourth place behind leaders Korea, with reigning champions Hungary second and Germany third.
Burke handed over to French in third place after two shoots and runs, and Britain were still third when French passed on to Livingston.
Strong run
Livingston dropped out of the top three in her opening shoot, but produced a strong final run to open Britain's medal account.
China climbed all the way from seventh to take the lead at the end of the final round of shooting, but Olympic champion Lena Schoneborn overhauled 2009 individual world champion Qian Chen on the final run to ensure Germany took gold.
Team GB are next in action on Thursday when Heather Fell, Samantha Murray, Freyja Prentice and Mhairi Spence contest the women's semi-finals aiming for places in the final on Saturday.
The championships are the final qualification event for the individual places at London 2012. British athletes must finish in the top three in the individual competitions to achieve the qualifying standard.
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 qualifying standard, but with a maximum of two places per gender per nation available, neither are guaranteed places at the Games.
