Fencer, Billy Shepherd has lunged his way through the rankings and has been selected to fight for Great Britain in the European Championships in the first week of March.
The Skipton Fencing Club member and student at South Craven School is one of four British epeeists in the under 17 age group to be selected to fence for Britain in individual and team competitions in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
In the last four months he has fenced for GB in Austria, France, Luxembourg and Denmark individually and in team events.
He has fought athletes from around the world, from countries such as Australia, Singapore, America and Hungary. In December, Billy, of Carleton, represented Yorkshire in their Cadet Winton team for the fourth successive year and won the prize for the best male epeeist for the second year running.
Cadet Winton is a competition for under 18 year-olds in memory of Sir Nicholas Winton, a British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War.
And on January 8 he won the Yorkshire Men’s Senior Epee Championships, at the age of 16, beating opponents of all ages which automatically selected him to represent Yorkshire at senior level for the first time in July.
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