TAVISTOCK martial artist Tate Budge has his sights on next year's European Championships and is continuing to build on his recent World Championship success.

At the tender age of 15 Tate has already a world championship title to his name after taking the Taekwon-do championships under 16s' second degree black belt patterns in Rome this summer.

Now the Tavistock College pupil is looking to gain a place in for team UK is next summer at the European Championships in Moldova - to do this Tate has to gain enough points at domestic competitions to be eligible for team UK selection.

Tate also has had to step up to the U18s category despite only being 15 as to enter the European competition participants have to compete in the age category that they will turn in the year of the competition - Tate will be 16 after the event but must now enter the 16-18 age group.

On October 25 Tate, accompanied by his father Dave, travelled to the K2 arena in Crawley, Sussex, for the ITF British Taekwon-do Championships where he entered both the U16s and U18s category for both second degree black belt patterns and second degree sparring.

Dave told the Times: 'He did very well and became U16s' British sparring champion and U18s British patterns champion as well as picking up a bronze medal in U16s patterns. He had to unfortunately pull out of the U18s sparring due to an injury sustained to his foot during the U16s sparring.

'As you can imagine we are all extremely proud of his continued achievements. The courage he showed on Saturday and determination to compete in the under 18s second degree patterns despite the injury he had to his foot really showed how much it means to him to represent his country once more.'

The next big domestic competition is the UK ITF championships in February where Tate will once again be competing in both categories and will try hard to win enough points to represent his country once more.

The teenager was also congratulated for becoming a world champion live on stage at Plymouth Pavilions last month by John Bishop and met the comedian after the show for a few photographs and a chat.