Gold went to Victoria Tereshuk (pictured) – women's individual winner - and Dmytro Kirpulyanskyy of Ukraine, with 6,212 points, home competitors Evdokia Gretchchnikova and Serguei Karyakin took silver with 6,148, and bronze went to the Lithuanian pairing of Laura Asadauskaite and Justinas Kinderis, who totalled 6,096.

Fell and Woodbridge amassed 6,016 points.

"It's the first time we've competed in the new mixed relay at this level," said Jan Bartu, Pentathlon GB Performance Director.

"Heather and Nick got up to fifth place going into the combined event.

"They had good performances, but it wasn't enough to stay where they started.

"I expected us to finish in the top-six or top-eight and that was about where we slotted in."

Fell and Woodbridge started the day with 11th place in the fencing, but moved up the field to eighth overall with an impressive 2x100 metres freestyle relay swim.

Their time of 1min 56.84sec was the second fastest.

They only dropped 60 points in the riding arena to continue their upward progress, moving to fifth place, 39 seconds behind Ukrainian event leaders going into the run/shoot.

Twenty nations contested the mixed relay.

Katy Burke, Freyja Prentice and Mhairi Spence – eighth in the women's individual event – will represent Britain in the women's team relay on the penultimate day, while on the final day Jamie Cooke, Rob Flack and Woodbridge go in the final event of the Championships, the men's team relay.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]