Speed skater Josh Paget nominated for Your Champions award

Oct 10 2008 by Paul Wheelock, Flintshire Chronicle

A TEENAGE Your Champions nominee is going to great lengths to give himself every chance of achieving his sporting dream.

Speed skater Josh Paget wants to compete for Great Britain at a Winter Olympic Games.

To do that, the 16-year-old from Hawarden trains with Flintshire Fliers on Mondays from 10pm.

Having been selected for the Government-funded Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS), Josh, Wales’s only speed skater, is having to up his training.

But with ice time at a premium at Deeside Ice Rink, the Hawarden High School student will have to make two weekly, four-hour round trips to Solihull in the West Midlands.

Josh, who is to skate in France next month, will have to juggle that with his sixth- form studies, his part-time job and his gym work at the Athlete Performance Centre in Sandycroft.

Josh, who will be too young for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, has been nominated in the Sporting Champion category.

It comes after the Queens- ferry branch of supermarket giants Asda awarded him £500 to help in his quest to reach the pinnacle of his sport.