YORK triathlete Philip Graves is on his way to Europe after being crowned national champion and winning the European trial in the space of a week.

The 16-year-old raced to victory in the National Youth Triathlon Championships at Llanelli after overtaking all the challengers on the bike section.

Seven days later he was back in action at the European championship qualifiers at Eton rowing lake and led out of the water, holding off a surge on the bike to race home despite being at the lower end of the age group.

The White Rose Tri Club member, who trains 20 hours a week, has won a number of key events and made a first appearance at the European Team Championships in Italy last year.

This year's race will be in Greece on July 23, where he is hoping to anchor the three-man team home to a gold medal.

Both wins came over the 400 metres swim, 10 kilometre bike and 2.5km run distance, where he has the best part of a year before making the leap to the next age level where the bike and run sections are doubled in length with the swim up to 750m.

The Heworth-based triathlete has just managed to fit the small matter of his GCSE examinations into his schedule and the Archbishop Holgate pupil will be going on to study his 'A'-Levels at Huntington School Sixth Form. His long term focus is on landing a place at leading sports university, Bath, before turning professional two years before the London 2012 Olympics.

He said: "I used to be a swimmer and a runner and then one of the White Rose coaches approached me a couple of years ago and that's when I took up the triathlon.

"To win at the trials was good because I wasn't expecting to win as I'm younger than a lot of the competitors due to the age groups on the continent being different.

"It's a relay where everybody completes a whole triathlon. We've got a good team with one South African and another guy from down south so we've got a multi-national and multi-regional line-up. The biggest challenge will come from the Italians because they are very strong cyclists so we'll be keeping an eye on them."

His sister Victoria narrowly missed out on team selection for the European relay.

Graves is the second huge success for the White Rose Club after Dot Wagstaff stole the headlines for winning the Triathlon World Championships in her age group and currently holds the title of national champion in her age category (60-65).

Updated: 11:17 Thursday, July 14, 2005