Since the women's modern pentathlon was introduced to the Olympic Games in 2000, Britain has never failed to win a medal.

Four have been collected in total, including a gold for Steph Cook in that first year in Sydney.

That is why Mhairi Spence is determined to make it to London 2012. The hard part could be making the British team. There are only two places available and only fellow-Scot Freyja Prentice has the qualifying standard. However, that could change in the week ahead at the World Championships in Rome.

Any sort of medal would secure the standard and Spence, currently the top British athlete at No 5 in the world, will fancy her chances. But even then, there are no guarantees. Four British women – including Spence – achieved the standard before Beijing four years ago but, with only two places available, two were disappointed. One of those selected, Heather Fell, went on to win the silver medal.

It was painful for Spence to miss out and she does not want to suffer a similar heartbreak this time around. Yet she faces three team-mates and rivals in Rome, all ranked in the top 20 in the world – Samantha Murray (12th), Fell (13th) and Prentice (19th). Rome represents the final chance to make the qualifying and, after that, it will be down to world rankings, the last chance to impress being at the World Cup final in Chengdu, China, at the end of the month.

"The easiest way to qualify is to go and win a medal; that would mean you would go to the Olympic Games barring exceptional circumstances such as injuries," Spence says. "Any good result will still give me ranking points and essentially I can still qualify through the rankings lists. The only way I'd definitely not be going was if two of our girls won medals at the World Championships and one of them wasn't me. But that's obviously a tall order so there's still all to play for and I think it will be that way until the selection panel meets in early June."

Based full-time at Bath University along with the rest of the GB squad, Spence – from Farr, south of Inverness – sees her rivals for a place every day but argues it is only helping her improve.

"Competition breeds competition and that in turn breeds success and that is why the squad is getting stronger and stronger," she says. "We're all fighting for the same thing and pushing each other on day to day as we see what the other athletes are doing. It's definitely a good environment to be in and we're lucky that, as a squad of girls, we get on well. We have our training day and then put that behind us and socialise together and have a good laugh."

Missing another Olympics is not something Spence can contemplate, although she believes she would now cope better with the disappointment.

"It was a really tough time for me. I was almost fine for a while and it took maybe six months before I hit quite a low patch. I really did question what I was doing and if 2012 was really an option for me. I questioned my ability as an athlete and that type of situation really does knock your confidence as a person.

"Being an athlete, it's you that's not good enough. It's not like other jobs where you can blame other things. As an athlete, it's your body, it's your ability, it's your skill. To not make it, made me feel I wasn't good enough and it did take quite a while for me to fight back and that's when I started working harder with the sports psychologist to find myself and figure out what I was wanting to do. I'm really glad I found my way through that tough time and I know I learned a lot from that situation.

"I think I'll be able to deal with whatever happens better as I know I'm a stronger person. It's such a cliche that saying what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. I say, what doesn't kill you, makes you cry and then eventually makes you stronger."