Sky Draper set a new course record as she stormed to her sixth consecutive title at the Middlesex Schools XC Championships.

The Northwood College teenager has a perfect record at these championships, having won the title at her age group in every year she has competed including the Under-17 Girls event which she successfully defended this year.

The Riverside Northwood club member Sky had not prepared specifically for the event this year and had continued with her normal, very demanding triathlon training programme in the run up to it. Nevertheless, as she lined up at the start of her race, she was hoping to improve substantially on her time of 12 months previously.

Draper's tactics were to put the rest of the field under pressure from the starting gun around the approximate 3.5k course. She was immediately at the front of the pack with one girl striving to stay with her. But with not much more than half a kilometre completed, Draper was already too strong for the others and had established a lead of about 25m.

Showing that she had judged the initial pace almost to perfection, Draper continued to push further and further ahead as she wound her way around the one lap course skirting Harrow School playing fields. By about the 2.5k point she was close to 100m ahead of the second girl and she maintained this advantage to finish in a time of 14.03, a winning margin of 18 seconds. In so doing she was 42 seconds faster than over the same course last year.

Draper said: "I love the course here at Harrow, it gets tough when you hit the back section and all the hills. I set out quite hard and established a good lead in the first 1.5k, then worked hard to make sure I maintained it over the second half. I'm really pleased with my performance, especially as I decided not to rest up for it but use it as part of my training for European trials in just over a month."

Meanwhile Draper will be taking part in the competition that British Triathlon has identified as its qualification race for the European Junior Championships. This qualifier is in Portugal on Sunday, April 1. If she does well enough in that, the triathlete will be selected to represent Great Britain at the European championships in Eilat, Israel on Friday, April 20.