NORTH-EAST athletes are expected to mount a strong challenge for medals at the English Schools Championships, which start in Exeter today.

Durham County, taking a full contingent of track and field competitors to Devon, have high hopes of winning at least two gold medals following outstanding performances recently.

Washington schoolboy Craig Glanville, who won five titles at the North-East Indoor Championships before winning the AAA 400m indoors gold medal, is also the Northern Indoor Pentathlon champion, and he prepared for this weekend's challenge by setting a new regional schools pentathlon mark at Jarrow at the end of last month.

The 16-year-old will be concentrating on the intermediate boys 400m and, after winning the bronze medal at Sheffield last year, is determined to cross the line first at Exeter.

Glanville clocked 52.0 secs setting the only record at this year's Durham Schools Championships, and he ran a tenth of a second faster in difficult wind conditions in the Inter Countries Schools Championships at Carlisle a week later.

Durham's other leading gold medal hope at Exeter is pole-vaulter Mark Christie, who cleared a personal best 4.60m at Gateshead in May and is now aiming to beat the English Schools Championships record of 4.70m.

Northumberland's leading medal hopes rest with two outstanding hurdlers, Claire Brason and Gemma Fergusson, who both compete for North Shields Polytechnic.

Brason, who was third in last weekend's AAA Under-20 400m hurdles, is the Northern and North-East junior women's champion, and at the Northumberland Schools Championships improved her own record to 61.6 secs.

Like Brason, Fergusson won a bronze medal at the English Schools Championships last year and has been hurdling superbly.

Another leading Northumberland medal candidate is sprinter David Riley, who won the English Schools junior boys championship two years ago. Riley set a new intermediate boys 100m record at the county championships, but at Exeter he will be racing in his stronger event, the 200m.

Double Junior Great North Run winner Charlotte Wickham represents Northumberland in the intermediate girls 3000m and has an excellent chance of a medal.

Cleveland, the smallest of the North-East counties - technically it no longer exists - have always given a good account of itself at the English Schools Championships.

This year their best hope of a gold medal seems to rest with exciting discus thrower Leslie Richards, who recently shot to the top of the UK under-17 rankings with a huge effort of 49.75m - 25 centimetres further than the World Youth Championships qualifying mark.

Cleveland's Sophie Dewell, the North-East senior women's champion, will be the first female athlete in the region to compete in the English Schools pole vault and will be looking to improve her pb of 2.90 in Exeter.