Castle Court School’s year six boys team are heading for next month’s national biathlon finals at Crystal Palace after winning the South West title.

The trio of Ben Samuel, Jed Skilton and George Robson won the regional team event for the Corfe Mullen school by a big margin at Bath University.

They achieved a combined score of 6,984 points, 540 ahead of their nearest challengers.

Their points tally also beat the winners of three other national semi-finals, held at Leeds, Macclesfield and Crystal Palace, making them favourites for the national title.

Samuel and Skilton also came first and second in the individual event with 2,477 and 2,348 points respectively.

Swim Bournemouth's Samuel won the 50m swim in 31.28 seconds and recorded a time of 1:30.91 in the 500m run.

Skilton’s time in the swim was 36.15 but he made up ground with second place in the run in 1:29.82.

Robson came 19th in the individual event with team-mate George Baugniet 35th.

In other categories, Izzy Pryce came 19th in the girls’ year six event and Lennon Harding-Wade was 44th in the year five boys.

Most of the Castle Court six improved on their previous best times. The six were among less than 250 youngsters from schools across the country who were selected by Pentathlon GB to compete from an original list of 6,000 who submitted consideration times.

The leading competitors from the four national semi-finals will converge on Crystal Palace for the national finals next month.