UIPM 2015 Senior World Championships - China is the World Champion

BERLIN, GERMANY - China dominated the women's relay for a second year in a row. The 2014 World Championship winning duo of Liang Wanxia and Chen Qian repeated their performance of less than twelve months ago to add another title to their collection.

Chen Quian said: "We are very happy as we won for a second time this World Champion title."

Liang Wanxia said: "The competition was very close. All teams made a very strong competition so we were surprised that we would get this result."

Today's silver medalists were the Lithuanian duo Leva Sarapinaite and Lina Batuleviciute who said: "We can't believe we achieved this medal. It's an amazing feeling running from the 5th place to silver.

"It's the first time that we compete together in the same team and also in Senior Championships and this is a fantastic result".

Day two of the 55th Modern Pentathlon World Championships promised to be another exciting display of top level competition with seventeen teams entered into the Women's Relay event.

The day began in the pool with the Japanese duo Shimazu Rena/ Tomonaga Natsumi winning the 2 x 100 metre relay in a time of 2.03.62 almost half a second ahead of nearest rivals Francesca Gandolfo/ Camilla Lontano from Italy. The Republic of Korea duo Jeong Mina/ Kim Sunwoo took third, another half a second behind the Italians. The hoçe nation German team of Annika Schleu/Lena Schoneborn finished in fourth.

But the strong performance in the pool did nothing to help Japan as they dropped out of contention after conceding twenty one defeats in the fencing round. Russia's Svetlana Lebedeva/ Ektarina Khuraskina fought back hard to win the fence with a score of twenty one victories and eleven defeats. Italy and China finished joint second with twenty victories each.

The fencing scores had a dramatic affect on the leader board with the winners Russia moving up from tenth after the swim to start the ride in third position. China climbed up to second with Italy taking the lead after a consistent top two finish in both the swim and the fence.

The ride event was won by the Irish duo Kate Coleman Lenehan/ Sive Brassil who scored the only perfect ride of the day. However there were no dramatic changes after the riding for the higher placed teams. Italy held on to the top slot maintaining a six second lead over China after both teams knocked down three rails in the ride. Russia remained in third place but had to share their position with the Germans who gained four more points after a solid riding performance. Lithuania's Leva Serapinaite/ Lina Batuleviciute crept up the leader board to fifth, so started the combined event only fifteen seconds behind top placed Italy.

The Belarus team of Iryna Prasiantsova/ Anastasiya Prokopenko had an impressive performance in the combined event moving up from ninth to fourth with the fastest time of the day.

China were the ones to catch, they were consistent throughout and managed to open up a comfortable margin after the final shoot. Positions for the silver and bronze were fought out between Poland and Lithuania after Italy dropped out of contention during the third shooting series. 2014 World Cup Winner Nowacka of Poland came into the range for the final shoot in second place but a fast shoot by Lithuania's Batuleviciute changed the standings.

Despite a determined final eight hundred metre run Poland could not quite regain their earlier position. Lithuania took the silver eight seconds behind China and Poland just one second behind to take bronze.

UIPM President Dr Klaus Schormann was delighted with the day's proceedings, stating: " It was again a fantastic day of competition from start to the finish with Italy beginning the Combined Event in the first place but the podium places decided only in the last moments.

"The entire day gave the athletes and spectators many thrilling moments. The winner coming for the second time from China shows that our sport is a global sport where athletes from all continents can win."

Follow all the action of this UIPM 2015 Senior World Championships with our live results of the Men's Qualification Competition tomorrow at www.pentathlon.org, our updates through Facebook at www.facebook.com/modpen and Twitter at https://twitter.com/UIPM_HQ