Herts and Essex High School girl Eleanor Mason in lockdown training for ETU European Aquathlon Championships in Slovenia

Bishop’s Stortford athlete Eleanor Mason is hoping all of her hard work in training during lockdown will pay off at the ETU European Aquathlon Championships in September.

The event, which was originally postponed until next year due to the coronavirus crisis, has now been rescheduled for the autumn.

Mason, 16, who is the reigning UK junior and youth champion, will take on the continent’s finest in Bled, Slovenia over the weekend of September 18-20.

This summer should have seen the Stortford athlete, who is in Year 12 at Herts and Essex High School, defending her silver medal for Team GB at the Europeans in Austria while the nationals and the worlds, in the Netherlands, have also bitten the dust.

But the September switch for the European competition means Mason – who was highly commended in the Stort Chemicals-sponsored Young Sports Personality category at last year’s Indies awards – has given her something in the near future to focus on.

The Bishop’s Stortford Swimming Club member has been busy putting in the miles on foot and on the bike as well as resuming open-water swimming training at a lake near Chelmsford.

In May 2019, Mason, then 15, was the youngest competitor in the ITU Aquathlon World Championships in Pontevedra, northern Spain, when she excelled to finish fifth in the female 16-19 category.

After winning silver in the European championships in Romania, she went on to produce her best ever performance by winning the youth under-17 and junior under-20 titles in finishing fourth in the senior women's event at the national championships in Sussex.