Olympic kayak champion Tim Brabants intends to use St Mary's, Twickenham, as his training base up to London 2012.

Brabants, who competes in Nottingham this weekend, came off a spell of training to back the launch of St Mary’s £8.2million project for three specialist sports centres.

The qualified doctor is putting his medical career on hold to concentrate on his Olympic preparations.

Brabants, who lives in Teddington, arrived at the launch having just done a training session in Bushy Park and gone out kayaking on the Thames nearby.

Although he was never a student at St Mary’s, he has used its gym for 15 years.

“I want to compete in London 2012 and St Mary’s is going to be a big part of that for me,” said Brabants.

“All my land training is going to be here.”

Former world 10,000m record holder David Bedford, a student at St Mary’s 40 years ago, raised a chuckle at the launch as he recalled getting into trouble for doing wheelies on the cricket pitch.

Professor Richard Fisher, head of St Mary’s 2012 preparations, when the university will be the training camp for the South African Olympic team, recalled the idea of an endurance training base was born back in 1991 when the Kenyans were seeking a running camp in London – and chose St Mary’s.

Until recently, UK Athletics had supported the centre at St Mary’s, where Steph Twell, Mo Farah, Andy Baddeley and Jo Pavey are all based. However, the London Marathon has recently taken over as its backers.