UK Sport

Home Advantage helps Mhairi win medal

Mhairi Spence
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Natalie Broadbent 14 April 2010

Britain’s Mhairi Spence won bronze on home soil at the Modern Pentathlon World Cup on Sunday.

It was the 24-year-old’s first World Cup medal and the first individual World Cup medal won by a Briton since the introduction of the new climax to the modern pentathlon, the combined run/shoot, at the start of last season.

The crowd cheered Spence into third place. She said after the event: “I felt like my legs were going all over the place at the end, but the home crowd carried me over the line.”

‘Home advantage’ has often been cited as a performance boosting factor in the sporting world, with the familiarity of venues and support of a home crowd often credited as pushing an athlete to a personal best or medal-winning performance.

The Home Advantage study, commissioned by UK Sport, analysed historical results from the World Championships of 14 Olympic sports, in addition to European Championships from three of these sports. A 25% increase in performance for the host nation has been determined after studying 10,000 ‘top eight’ placings across 99 major events around the world and using a points system to provide a standardised measure of the results.

As competition hosts, Great Britain were able to field 12 athletes in each event (men’s and women’s) rather than the usual four, giving younger athletes the opportunity to get international experience.

A record eight British athletes qualified for the women’s final with 20-year-old Katy Burke finishing fourth to achieve her best World Cup placing yet, and Samantha Murray and Freyja Prentice both securing top-10 finishes in seventh and ninth respectively.

Eighteen-year-old Kate French finished 28th overall at her first World Cup.
She said: “My aim was to get into the final and I was really pleased to have done that. I had so much encouragement from the crowd today.”

UK Sport supported the event with up to £120,000 in funding and had previously supported the World Championships at Crystal Palace in 2009 and the World Cups in 2007 and 2008.

Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB’s performance director, said: “Mhairi’s third place is fantastic for her. She has struggled a bit with the new format and she is just getting there now. We’ve really seen some of our junior athletes coming through today.

“This wouldn’t have been possible without the fantastic support we’ve had from UK Sport and Lottery funding,” he added.

For more information see the competition website at http://www.pentathlongb.org/mpwc/index.php

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