The trio of Katy Livingston, Heather Fell and Harland and overpowered the Russian team in the last discipline – the 3x1500 metres relay run – to strike gold in Latvia.

 

It brought Britain's final medal haul at the Championships to a gold and two silvers – a better performance than at last year’s Europeans
 
GB Performance Director Jan Bartu said: “I’m happy with the way the GB team competed in Riga.

 

"We showed we’ve got much more balance and depth in the team.

 

"It was great to see the Union Flag going up at the end of the championships.
 
“It was a slightly better performance than last year.

 

Our athletes competed well and with confidence and they deserved the medals and places they achieved.
 
“There is still room for some improvement and hopefully that will culminate at the World Championships in Berlin in August, which is another Olympic qualifier.
 
“It’s been a great week and mostly enjoyable.

 

"e organisers here have done a really good job.”
 
The GB women’s team were joint first with Belarus after the first discipline in the team relay – the shooting.

 

They dropped down to second spot behind Russia after the fencing.
 
The Russian trio remained in top spot after the swim and the ride and held a 76 points lead going into the final discipline, the run.
 
But Britain’s team demonstrated their running strength to complete the 1500m relay in 16min 15secmost 30 seconds ahead of the Russians.
 
Livingston knocked 12 seconds of the Russian lead in the opening leg, with Fell removing the rest of the Russians’ lead within the first 500m of her leg, before handing over in the lead to Harland, who control the race and could cruise to gold.
 
It meant they beat the Russian team of Tatiana Mouratova, Ludmila Sirotkina and Polina Strutchkova by 36 points.

 

Great Britain scored a total of 5,721 points to take gold, with Russia scoring 5,136 to take silver and the Hungarian trio of Zsuzsanna Voros, Vivien Mathe and Sarolta Kovacs taking bronze with 5128 points.
 
It rounded off the Championships which had already seen Fell win the silver medal in the women’s individual competition, with Livingston, Harland and Mhairi Spence also winning silver in the team competition.
 
Livingston finished sixth in the women’s individual event – which means both her and Fell become the first GB modern pentathletes to achieve the Olympic qualification standard for Beijing 2008.