A YOUNGSTER is celebrating becoming potentially the youngest person ever to achieve a black belt in taekwondo.

Lucy Aston, seven, of Shaw Street, Spennymoor, County Durham, achieved the feat just three years after taking up the martial art.

A pupil at Oxclose Primary School, in Spennymoor, she is a member of the Chi Taekwondo club and she attends lessons three times a week.

Wendy Aston, Lucy’s mother, said: “She had an older friend at the club and so she decided to join.

“To achieve the black belt she had to attend a grading in front of British Taekwondo experts. She is very proud and I think she found it easier than she expected to.

“I think she will go on to get her second dan and she wants to enter a fighting competition later this year.”

Lucy is also a member of the club’s Chi Dragons demonstration team and she is part of the Deerness Gymnastics Academy, in Durham.

Taekwondo instructor Russell Shaw said: “As far as I’m concerned Lucy is the youngest person to achieve a black belt. The next youngest I know of is eight-years-old.

“It’s a massive achievement. I did expect her to get a black belt by the time she was nine but to have one by the time she was seven is very quick.

“I think that she is capable of an Olympic standard and the world is her oyster at the moment.”

Mrs Aston and her husband Robert plus their son Adam also attend the club.

Adam, ten, is a black tag which is one step below a black belt while Mr Aston is a brown belt and his wife is a green belt.