SOUTH Zeal twins Laura and Sarah Gomersall have been celebrating after learning that both of them have been selected to represent Great Britain at the modern tetrathlon European Championships in Budapest this week.

The twins will travel with two other girls to Hungary to compete in the three-day modern tetrathlon event ? shoot, fence, swim and run.

The girls have both competed internationally for the last two years, but this is the first time they will compete together in major championships.

Laura has previously travelled to Spain and France to take part in international competitions, but Sarah narrowly missed out on the team for those events.

The girl?s father Chris said they had trained hard to achieve new targets to keep their places on the world class potential programme for modern pentathlon ? this year they have also moved up an age group and now compete at Youth A under-18- level. The 16-year-old twins are now competing against girls who are a year or two older.

Chris said his daughters were ?quite competitive? so being sporting rivals at a major championship for the first time would not be a problem.

Laura and Sarah are keen to perform well in the European Championships, as the results will be a factor in the Great Britain team selection for the World Championships being held in Mexico City in August.

Chris said his daughters had targeted this competition as their aim for the first part of the season, but there would be two more national events where results would go towards selection for the World Championships, which was the twin?s main aim for the second half of the season.

Like Tavistock Olympic modern pentathlon bronze medal star Kate Allenby, Sarah and Laura branched into athletic disciplines after starting out taking part in pony club events.

Sarah and Laura are members of Mid Devon Pony Club.