WITHAM'S Jess Hopkins showed once again why she is considered as one of the country's brightest rising multi-event athletics talents by storming to victory at the England Under-15 Hexathlon Championships.

The 14-year-old Maltings Academy pupil is already placed in the top four in the UK's under-15 pentathlon rankings and put in a superb performance to take the gold medal in the six-discipline event at Bedford.

She competed in the 75 metre hurdles, long jump, javelin, shot putt, high jump and 800m, finishing with a winning 3,769 points that was 270 clear of the second-placed athlete and just 78 off the British record.

She said: "The whole weekend was an amazing experience and I'd like to say a massive thank you to my school Maltings Academy in Witham for entering me to this event and my coaches Steve Mitchell and Sarah Besford for making all of it possible.

"The first event was the hurdles, where I came first in my heat with a new PB (personal best) of 11.74 seconds and overall was fourth out of all the heats. "The next event was long jump and I got another PB of 5.29m which put me into second position.

"It was a very good start to the day and gave me a massive confidence boost for the next event, which was javelin.

"I threw 36.59 metres, which put me in first by 200 points at the end of day one.

"The first event of the next day was shot putt.

"Recently my shot put hasn't been going as well as I'd hoped it would, but I managed to throw 12.12 metres which is a lot further than I threw at English Schools Championships a few months ago (11.46m).

"That put me 361 points in front of everyone else ahead of the high jump, but at this point, my leg was beginning to cramp up, so it didn't go as well as I would've liked it to go.

"I jumped 1.59m but that still put me in the lead by 556 points.

"The last event was the 800 metres, which I ran in two minutes 53 seconds and finished only 78 points away from the British record."