Mhairi Spence

Career After seeing the 2000 Summer Olympics, she began training in fencing so that she could switch disciplines to Modern Pentathlon. After four weeks in the new sport, she won her class at the British Youth Championships. Women's Modern Pentathlon features five events, first fencing, then swimming, showjumping, and finally a discipline combining running and pistol shooting. She finished in eight place at the 2011 World Modern Pentathlon Championships. At the first World Cup event of 2012, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, she took the silver medal in second place. She was leading going into the final event, the run/shoot discipline, but was overtaken by Lena Schoneborn, the reigning Olympic champion.

She entered the 2012 World Modern Pentathlon Championships ranked in 5th place in the world rankings. She achieved the gold medal position coming from 37 seconds behind the leader in the final discipline,

Following her gold medal at the 2012 World Championships, she was considered one of the favourites to be chosen for one of the two spots for the women's Pentathlon in the British team for the 2012 Summer Olympics along with Samantha Murray. Due to her placing at the Championships, she was deemed to have met the minimum standard required to compete at the Games, along with Murray and Freyja Prentice who qualified at the 2011 European Championships. Her selection as part of the British team at the 2012 Games was announced on 8 June.

Personal life She has an ambition to be the host of the BBC One sports quiz show A Question of Sport. She trains at the University of Bath.