IN a major step towards her London 2012 Olympic ambitions, Kate Walker has been named Olympic reserve for the forthcoming Beijing games.

The 18-year-old star from Kidderminster's Samurai Judo Club is already Worcestershire's most successful judo player of all time and now seems certain to be the number one choice for London.

Edinburgh's former Senior European champion Sarah Clark was the obvious choice for this Olympics at Walker's weight category of under 63 kilos, but she will be nearly 35-years-old by the time London comes around.

The teenager has already thrown Clark a few times in training, though they have never met in competition.

Walker is currently in Moscow, where she has just finished seventh in the Russian Open. Two weeks ago she took the bronze medal at the German Open despite having 46 top quality players in her category.

After three good wins, defeat against the eventual gold medallist by quite a low score was not too bad a result.

Now she is training in the Russian camp for a few days, where she has the chance to fight informally against the players from other countries who were at the event.

Back in this country, Walker normally trains daily for around two hours on the mat, as well as a further two hours a day in the gym on carefully prepared programmes.

She is fitting this in around a first year degree course in pharmacy, although she may take a couple of years off from her studies to train full time as London nears. Currently, she is British Junior champion, British Senior champion, British Universities champion, English Senior Open champion and Welsh Open champion, and has not been beaten in this country since February 2007, a run of 46 consecutive wins.

Her success and that of Kelly Edwards, who also trains at Samurai and is equally likely to go to the London Olympics in the under 48 kilos category, means there is a judo club in the county capable of producing Olympic standard players.

The club's chief coach, fifth dan Andrew Haffner said: "She really deserves her success.

"We expected this year to be a very successful one but she is surpassing all expectations and the Olympic Reserve position was a nice bonus."