William Eccleston (age 16yrs) has been involved in the Multisport of Modern Pentathlon for the past 3 years. Last year William won both the British Youth Triathlon and Tetrathlon Championships and following his success in the British Youth (U18) Modern Pentathlon Ranking Competitions was selected to Represent Great Britain in the Youth European Championships in St Petersburg, Russia and Youth World Championships in Wuhan, China. His achievements have been recognised by the British Olympic Committee with his inclusion onto their Modern Pentathlon 'World Class Podium Potential' programme.

On the weekend of March 14th William represented Great Britain in the first Modern Pentathlon Youth International of the season. Eleven nations from across Europe and one from Australia met up in Birmingham on a bright but chilly morning at 6am to compete. The first element was the 200m swim. William performed to his best with a personal best time of 2.03.58. This placed him 8th. The competition was very tough with one of the athletes breaking the Pentathlon Youth World Record that had stood for 6yrs, with a time of 1.54.41.

There was then a 3 hour break while the girls competed in their fencing element giving the boys a chance to rest, eat and socialise with the other countries athletes. Due to their regular training camps and competitions many of the athletes have become friends and thankfully most speak English.

The fencing element is always tough for the British athletes as it's almost a national sport in Hungary, Czech Republic and many of the other Eastern bloc countries. William won 17 of his 33 bouts, so an average performance. This was the second best performance by a Brit but dropped him to 12 position overall. Then came the final combined event of running and shooting, this is probably Williams best event. As the sun started to set on what had been a long day for all. William was able to pull out another personal best performance improving his final position to 4th. He was beaten by an Australian, who had travelled a long way for this competition and two Hungarians, one of whom is ranked 2nd in the world. William was pleased with the result but frustrated at how much better it could have been with a better fence.

With this result William has reaffirmed his top national ranking and improved his World Ranking to 13th.