THE dream is alive and well for local judo player James Hayes as he looks towards winning a place at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Hayes, from Cam, was a first-year junior last year and finished a brilliant debut season with a haul of medals – and a lot of motivation to carry on into 2016.

Now Hayes, who works as an apprentice at engineering company Renishaw in Wotton-under-Edge, is looking to make his presence felt with the national selectors at both junior and senior level and will start that by taking on some of the best in the UK as well as aiming for junior European glory.

Hayes, 18, fights at the under-73 kilo weight category and is currently ranked second in the UK in his age group.

He won gold at the Scottish, Welsh and Irish Junior Open Championships last year and finished it with a bronze medal in both the Junior and Senior British Judo Championships in Decembe. And that now means that Hayes has been selected to join both the Junior and Senior Great Britain squads this year.

He said: “It seems to be all coming together. At the latter part of the year, I was doing some senior competitions and I managed to qualify for the British Championships. Being a first year junior, that was pretty impressive.

“I managed to take bronze in both the junior and senior competitions. In the seniors, I was up against opponents who were 23 or 24 and physically bigger than me.”

He will be competing again at the English Open in Sheffield next month where he is aiming to turn over a few more senior opponents as he builds his strength and experience towards his main goal of the Olympics in four years’ time. As well as that, he is flying around Europe to compete in World Cup events.

And that all bodes well towards the coming years. He added: “This year, my target is the Junior European Championships which are taking place around September and I am looking to get results in the World Cup events.”

By having a great 2015 and hopefully a good 2016, Hayes is looking to put himself in the minds of the national selectors of both Great Britain and England, with the latter meaning he could land a place on the plane to Australia’s Gold Coast in 2018 for the next Commonwealth Games.

So he firmly believes the dream is on. “Yes, I feel I am definitely on course and the big test will be 2018 when they do selection for the Commonwealths.

“It’s all about impressing the selectors and hopefully I can do enough to get selected.”

Hayes would also like to thank his local sponsors for their help as they continue to back his Olympic dream.