May has been a big month for three of The Northern Echo's aspiring young Olympians.
As part of our ongoing Dreams of Gold feature, Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson looks at how Katy Livingston, Paul Drinkhall and Jemma Lowe are continuing to hone their skills ahead of London 2012.
FIRST World Cup medal made it a marvellous May for Katy Livingston but the Redcar-born modern pentathlete is hoping to enjoy an even more joyous June by booking a place in next year's Olympic Games in Beijing.
Livingston has been named in the British team for next month's European Championships in Latvia after a career-best performance in last weekend's World Cup event in Moscow.
And with the first eight finishers in the European event gaining an automatic qualification place for the 2008 Olympics, the 23-year-old is hoping to carry her fine form with her as she returns to the former Eastern bloc.
"Things have been going well in the last couple of months,"
said Livingston, a New Marske Harrier who is now based at the British modern pentathlon highperformance centre at the University of Bath.
"But the focus for this year has always really been on the European Championships and I'm 100 per cent focused on them now.
"It would have been a big enough event anyway because most of the world's leading women are European and they're just about all going to be competing in Latvia.
"But the fact that there are eight Olympic places up for grabs obviously makes it even more important.
It's a pretty big prize to be dangling in front of you."
Given that Georgina Harland, silver medallist at the Athens Olympics, is almost certain of a place at Beijing, the competition among the rest of the British squad is intense.
As one of the younger members of the team, Livingston was an outside candidate for an Olympic place at the start of the year. But after claiming a silver medal in Moscow last week, the North-Easterner will travel to Latvia with realistic hopes of a top-eight finish.
Having finshed eighth in her previous World Cup outing, Livingston's performance in Moscow was something of a breakthrough at the very highest level of her sport.
A personal best of 184 points out of 200 saw her lying second after the opening shoot, and 20 fencing victories left her in third place after the second of the five pentathlon disciplines.
A lifetime-best swim kept her at the heart of the leading group, before a clear round in the horse riding left Livingston in third place with one event to go.
Running has always been one of the Marske Harrier's strongest suits and, in the final 3,000m race, she duly swept past compatriot Heather Fell in the final 400m to claim a silver medal behind Russian Tatiana Mouratova.
"It was a strong competition so to finish second was a really good achievement," said Livingston.
"It's not very long ago that I was still competing in junior events, so to get a senior World Cup medal shows that everything's moving forward.
"It was good to get a couple of personal bests in the shooting and the swimming; I just hope I can do as well over in Latvia next month."
British team manager Istvan Nemeth was equally impressed with Livingston's performance, with the pentathlon chief claiming that one of his youngest performers had announced her arrival on the World Cup stage in style.
"Katy should take a lot of confidence from this performance," said Nemeth.
"She was competing against some of the best modern pentathletes in the world, but she proved that this is exactly where she belongs."
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