ATHERTON’S Alice Fitton missed out on a medal in the opening competition of the 2014 Modern Pentathlon World Championships in Poland yesterday.

Alongside Samantha Murray, they ended the day in 13th place in the women’s relay at the championships in Warsaw.

They started off well, finishing joint ninth among the 15 pairings in the fencing with 13 victories from their 28 bouts worth 194 pentathlon points. The Belarus pair of Katsiaryna Arol and Anastasiya Prokopenko led the field with 19 fencing victories for 242 points.

Murray and Fitton produced by far the quickest swim time of the day to climb to fifth overall. The British duo were the only pair to break the two-minute mark for the 2x100m freestyle relay – and they did it in style with a time of 1:56.67.

That added 350 pentathlon points to their total to put them fifth with 544 points, with China’s Qian Chen and Wanxia Liang the new leaders on 564 points.

But the British campaign effectively ended the in riding arena, where Murray struggled to control her horse, leading to the team’s elimination from the ride. It meant Britain took no points from the ride, dropping to 13th overall. China continued to lead on 864 pentathlon points.

Fitton and Murray put in a brave battle in the run/shoot. Their combined event time of 12:14.03 was the seventh fastest of the day, but it wasn’t enough to improve on their 13th place.

Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB Performance Director, said the pair performed well across the day, apart from that ride.

“That’s pentathlon, sometimes this happens,” he said. “I’m sure it will happen to other nations during the course of the championships, but hopefully it was a one-off for us.

“They had a reasonable day other than that. They looked good after the swim and they both shot well and had a very good combined event.”

China comfortably took gold, from Belarus and Italy.