Career
Harland was chosen as a non-travelling reserve for the 2000 Summer Olympics, with Steph Cook and Kate Allenby taking the two British spots in the women's modern pentathlon. She described herself as having been "devastated" at the decision, but supported her friends and training partners through the Games.
She won the 2003 European Champions, which qualified her for the 2004 Summer Olympics as she had finished ahead of fellow Brit Sian Lewis. She went into the Games as world number one, hoping to emulate the gold medal victory of Steph Cook in the previous Olympics. She said that the shooting event was her worst out of the five events. Two weeks prior to the Games she suffered a stress fracture in her right leg, requiring an orthopedic cast.
In the first round of Olympic competition, the shooting, she scored 156 points out of 200 which left her sitting in 30th place out of 33 competitors. The fencing round saw her move up to 26th after winning 16 of the 31 one on one matches against the other pentathletes. She finished second in the swimming with a time of 2:14:60, moving her further up to 19th overall. After finishing the showjumping as the fourth event, she moved up to fourteenth overall. She mounted a comeback in the final event, the cross-country, and completed the race over thirty seconds faster than anyone else, moving her up to third place and winning the bronze medal. She had started 51 seconds behind the third placed athlete, Claudia Corsini, and needed to overtake twelve athletes during the race.
During the build up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, Harland won the third World Cup event of 2007, which was Harland's first event of the year. However, she failed to qualify for the Games and retired at the close of the 2008 season. During her professional career, she maintained a top five ranking worldwide between 2001 and 2008. She was named on the Mission 2012 panel by UK Sport in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Georgina Harland
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