REECE Holgate is not your average teenager.

Out of school time for the North Craven 15-year-old is not spent on his computer, hidden away in his bedroom, or even on the sports pitch.

Instead, the Settle College schoolboy spends his spare time honing his skills as a rising star in the competitive world of harness racing. Reece, the third generation of his family, after father, Neil, to take up harness racing, achieved his British Harness Racing Licence earlier this year - as soon as he was old enough and making him amongst the youngest drivers in the country.

At his first two competitions, he won both times, and at this year's Kilnsey Show in front of an enthusiastic crowd, he put on a magnificent display of horsemanship to win the principal event, the open one-and-a-quarter mile handicap with Vyrnwy Marquis, a horse trained by his father.

At home in Austwick, training for racing season, between April and October, is a full time job, with Reece spending all his spare time on the family farm's specially laid race track, with a surface the same as that used to train race horses.

Training can also take place on the road, but it is on the race track that the majority of work is carried out, although its corners are a bit tighter than a proper competition track.

Marquis, a seven-year-old Standard bred, standing at 15.2hh, is a pacer. Unlike a trotter, which will move the same way as most other horses, including racehorses, both legs on either side of a pacer move forward and backwards at the same time - in the same way that an Icelandic horse moves.

Their harness also includes loose straps enveloping their legs, and a pacer that breaks into a canter, will have to be quickly brought back to the pace - or risk disqualification. Pacers can be also ridden, but the gait is quite different from a traditional riding horse.

Marquis, however, has not been broken to ride under a saddle and it is racing in harness that Reece excels.

Much like horse racing, the drivers wear racing silks, a helmet and now, body protectors. They can race at speeds of up to 35 mph and there can be up to ten racers in a contest, all vying for first place. It is not a sport for the faint hearted.

During the season, Reece will train Marquis six days out of seven. Twice a week will be fast work, with the other days, slower, fitness work.

Reece, father, Neil and stepmother, Gaynor, travel to contests all over the country during racing season. Ruled over by the British Harness Racing Club, the rules are strict - racing on roads is strictly forbidden and those who indulge in road racing are not welcome at BHRC competitions.