IT looks like being a busy summer for Tom Lancashire with his A levels and the small matter of trying to make his way into the Great Britain team for the European Junior Championships in Finland.

Unfortunately for the 17-year-old Bolton athlete the selection race for that particular competition is held during the last weekend of the exams he will sit at Turton High School, where he is head boy.

Such is life for the Bromley Cross lad who nine days ago swapped his revision notes for a Great Britain junior vest in the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Switzerland.

But even with such important academic dates ahead, Tom, who specialises in the 1500m, is looking a few years into the future.

"Long term I want to run in the Olympic Games," he said. "I think it is a realistic, but of course there is quite a way to go.

"I don't think the 2004 games is realistic, it will probably be too early. I would hope that my first major international competition will be the next Commonwealth Games in 2006 - not least because it would be a nice trip to Australia.

"Then I will hopefully take it from there and do my best to get to Beijing."

Tom's strategy is geared towards peaking around that time, and he feels it is perhaps for that reason he did not perform to his full capabilities in his recent cross-country outing for Great Britain in Switzerland, in which he finished below his expectations in 75th place.

He explained: "I really wanted a top 60 finish but I did not know what to expect because it was the biggest event I've ever been in.

"Track is my main goal and the cross country is to get me in shape for the track season, but obviously I wanted to do as well as I could for Great Britain. It was a great experience just being with the team and racing overseas for the first time.

"The pace of the race was different to anything I had been in before. The thing that hit me was that the leaders were just so far in front of me.

"It puts things into perspective about how hard you have to work at it to get to the top level. I train a lot and still I am quite far behind them. But it's a motivation as well.

"As far as training and racing goes I am doing as much as I can at the moment. But it's not just about doing well now, the plan is to be at my best in my mid-20s.

"There are so many runners who are brilliant at 15 or 16-years-old but then disappear. For me it is about long term progression."

Having said all that he is not doing too badly in the present either. He came third in the English Schools Cross Country Championships, and last season was the eighth fastest under-20 in the country at 1500m, when he won the English Schools title with a personal best of 3:48.91 just days after his 17th birthday.

Tom, who is coached by Jack Caldwell of Bolton United Harriers, is currently planning to take 12 months out in the United States next year before going to university in this country - he has currently had offers from Cambridge and Manchester.

But there will be decisions to make as he must juggle his athletics with his studies and a prospective career in medicine.

He said: "I would really like to be able to do both, but I will take athletics first. You have to make the most of sport early in life and do as much as you can, I can always come back to medicine."