INTERNATIONAL glory awaits a quartet of York paddlers after success on the canoe slalom.

Alan Cardy, from Holgate, is in line to challenge for the British Championship after finishing first and third in the two National Premier Race events on the River Tay in Scotland.

Those two events were the second and third of the top tier eight-race championship series, which continues in Nottingham in June.

Although 25-year-old Cardy was out of the running in the first race in North Wales, competitors can pick their top five finishes to count in the overall standings, so his first and third in Scotland leave him well set.

Cardy has also been picked for the Great Britain squad this year and is set to represent the nation in a World Cup event in Italy in the summer.

He has missed out on Olympics selection as that squad was chosen based on last year's results, the York star's hopes being hit by illness.

Acomb teenager Joe Stephenson won the national ranking Division One race in Scotland.

That followed a fifth place in Wales and another top ten finish in a preceding event in Nottingham.

The 16-year-old All Saints Sixth Form student now looks well set to be promoted up to the Premier arena.

Stephenson has been selected for the England junior squad to race in the Danube Cup in Bratislava, in which he reached the semi-finals last year against the cream of the European junior crop.

Two more youngsters from the Tadcaster-based Lower Wharfe Canoe Club are set for national honours.

Tadcaster Grammar School pupil Thomas Quinn, 13, of Bishopthorpe, and 11-year-old Thomas Smithson, of Stamford Bridge, have been picked for the England junior squads, having got on to the Lottery-funded World Class Programme.

Updated: 10:09 Saturday, May 15, 2004