Woodbridge out of medals despite stunning swim
28th June 2009Nick Woodbridge couldn’t emulate the performances of Britain’s women as he finished out of the medals in 32nd place in the men’s final at the Modern Pentathlon European Championships in Leipzig today (Sunday).
Woodbridge was the only one of Britain’s four men to reach the final from Friday’s semis.
He produced a stunning swim today and was seventh going into the final discipline, the new combined run/shoot. But Woodbridge struggled on the run/shoot dropping down the field and out of medal contention. The British men finished 11th in the team event.
On Saturday Heather Fell won silver in the individual women’s competition, while Fell, Katy Livingston and Mhairi Spence won the team gold.
Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB performance director, said: “Nick spent over three minutes on the shooting range today and he couldn’t recover from that.
“It was a frustrating for him, but it’s a learning experience too, so we can learn from that.”
Woodbridge started the day with 17 wins and 18 defeats from the fencing for 808 points and joint 19th place overall.
He followed that up with a stunning 200m freestyle swim to climb to seventh. His time of 1:55.73 was a personal best and was comfortably the fastest of the day – he was almost six seconds quicker than the second fastest swimmer.
He dropped 72 points in the equestrian arena. After a refusal at the second fence, he had one fence down and also accumulated 12 time penalties to add 1128 points to his tally.
That was enough to keep Woodbridge in seventh going into the combined run/shoot, with Lithuania’s Justinas Kinderis leading the field from Ondrej Polivka of the Czech Republic.
But Woodbridge struggled from the first of three shooting elements, dropping well out of contention for the medals.
Polivka produced a strong performance to take gold, hitting five shots from five in his second of three stints on the shooting range.
The women return to action tomorrow (Monday) in the team relay. They will aim to build on the individual silver medal won by Heather Fell yesterday (Saturday) and the team gold won by Heather Fell, Katy Livingston and Mhairi Spence.
Fell, Livingston and Louise Helyer will contest the team relay for Great Britain.
Men’s individual results
Gold: Ondrej Polivka (CZE) - 6060 points
Silver: Ilia Frolov (RUS) - 6036 points
Bronze: Adam Marosi (HUN) – 6032 points
32nd: Nick Woodbridge (GBR) – 5468 points
37th: Sam Weale (GBR) – 4548 points (semi-final only)
47th: Gareth Evans (GBR) – 4332 points (semi-final only)
60th: Russell North (GBR) – 4012 points (semi-final only)
Men’s team results
Gold: Lithuania – 17700 points
Silver: Czech Republic – 17668 points
Bronze: Belarus – 17476 points
11th: Great Britain (Nick Woodbridge, Sam Weale & Gareth Evans) – 14348 points
The full British team for the 2009 European Championships is:
Heather Fell
Louise Helyer
Katy Livingston
Mhairi Spence
Gareth Evans
Russell North
Sam Weale
Nick Woodbridge
Team relay
Lee Ormerod
The format for the championships is:
Thursday 25 June: women’s qualifiers
Friday 26 June: men’s qualifiers
Saturday 27 June: women’s final (incl team competition)
Sunday 28 June: men’s final (incl team competition)
Monday 29 June: women’s team relay
Tuesday 30 June: men’s team relay