Fast rising Great Britain modern pentathlon star Zoe Davison was in Hungary when she spoke to The Local Answer.

She was preparing for the Budapest Indoor Competition – part of a 12-strong senior GB team that included recently crowned men’s world champion and one-time Balcarras School pupil Jamie Cooke.

Budapest is just one of many places visited over the past year or so by Zoe, who is still young enough to qualify as a junior.

The recently turned 20-year-old’s sporting prowess in the multi-discipline event has taken her pretty much all over the globe – Cairo, Prague, Barcelona, Rome and Mexico City to name just a few – so much so that once her career as an elite athlete is over she could easily set up her own holiday travel business!

Not that Zoe is thinking that far ahead, of course, far from it.

Born in Stroud, the one-time Beaudesert School and Wycliffe College pupil – she also spent a year at Millfield School – first became interested in multi-discipline sport when she started doing tetrathlon, a team competition organised for its members by the Pony Club.

That obviously involved riding and she was a good rider from a young age. She considers that still to be her strongest suit and of the other four disciplines that make up modern pentathlon – swimming, running, shooting and fencing – she says the swimming is her next best event.

She was good at all sport of course – “I played all the team sports at school, hockey, netball, rounders,” she said – but it was always the multi-disciplined events that really grabbed her.

And it’s easy to see why because she made her international debut at the age of just 15 in a Great Britain youth international.

That was just the start. Two years later she was an individual bronze medal winner and a team gold medal winner in a Great Britain youth international and last year – her first as a junior – she hit new heights.

And some roll of honour it is too because she was selected for her first ever World Cup in Cairo in March, won silver medals at the Milan Kadlec Junior Memorial in Prague in April and at the British Junior Modern Pentathlon Championships in June and became the Junior European women’s relay champion alongside Charlie Follett.

She also claimed a 16th place individual finish at the Junior European Championships in Barcelona in June, before finishing fourth at the Junior World Championships in the Czech Republic in August and gaining selection for the World Championships in Mexico in September.

Not surprisingly, Zoe, who is now based at Pentathlon GB’s national training centre at the University of Bath, is loving life.

“It’s been my dream to be a full-time athlete since I was a lot younger,” she said. “I’m very happy, I love it.

“The last two years, especially the last year, have been phenomenal.”

The standout performance was that fourth-placed finish at the Junior World Championships in Prague although she admitted that when she crossed the line she had no idea she was in the top four.

“I was so in the zone,” she said. “I was completely unaware that I was fourth.”

It meant she just missed out on a place on the podium and despite her outstanding performance she admits: “I am rather gutted that I missed out on a medal by five seconds.”

But fourth place is certainly a pretty impressive achievement and the Pentathlon GB powers-that-be certainly thought so because a month later Zoe was competing in the senior world championships in Mexico against all the biggest names in the sport.

“That was an incredible experience,” she said. “At the start of the year I never thought I’d be selected. Just to be selected was a massive, massive confidence boost, the competition was another level.”

Zoe just missed out on a place in the final, finishing about 40th which is no mean feat in itself and she added: “It was tricky because it wasn’t my peak of the season.

“My peak was at the junior worlds. I was so tired but I was very pleased with how I performed.”

It should come as no surprise that Zoe is so good in her chosen field because sport has always been a big part of her family’s life going back generations.

“My grandfather on my dad’s side, Jack Davison, held the Commonwealth record for 400 metres hurdles,” she said with pride.

“And my great great grandfather on my mum’s side brought over front crawl to this country from Australia in World War One. It was originally called the Australian crawl.”

These days it’s better known as freestyle and of course Davison junior is very good at that too.

So what are her aims for 2019?

“It’s going to be a hectic season because I’m hoping to perform not only in the juniors but also the seniors,” she said.

“My aim is to finish in the top three in the junior worlds and junior Europeans and to be selected for the senior worlds and senior Europeans.”

You certainly wouldn’t bet against her achieving all four of those aims.