Teddington Olympic hopeful Andy Vernon is out to use Britain’s silver medal winning success at the European cross country championships as a platform for an assault on London 2012 qualifcation.

The 25-year-old clocked 29 minutes, 39 seconds to be the first Brit home as he finished ninth in Slovenia on Sunday, helping the Team GB’s senior men to second place in the team standings.

The St Mary’s University student jets off to Australia this month for warm weather training as he bids to get next year off to a flyer.

And while his race did not go exactly to plan, he admitted the weekend’s result had put a spring in his step.

“I wanted to be in the top five,” he said.

“I said before the race that if I finish sixth that would be great, but if I finished 16th I would have been disappointed. Ninth is about half way.”

“We all did really well. I didn’t really do much over the last lap because I had a big gap in front of me so I needed to make sure I didn’t get caught on the last lap.

“It has been a great way to finish the year.

“The European Cross Country is a great thing to aim for the first half of the winter.

“You can guage where you are and where you want to be and if you do well then you have a good Christmas.”

Vernon, who finished 24 seconds behind Belgian winner Atelaw Bekele at the weekend, will be working with new coach Nic Bedeau during his four months Down Under as he bids to better the 5,000m Olympic A standard qualifying time early next year.

As such he is happy to put the cross country campaign behind him to concentrate his efforts on the track “I’m going to Australia, so that will be it for the cross country now,” he added.

“It is all about concentrating on the track and getting the A standard for the Olympics and hopefully qualifying.”

Fellow St Mary’s-based athlete Steph Twell stepped up her comeback from injury in fine style as she helpd the British women’s U23 team to gold.

The 22-year-old three-time junior European cross country champion has been out of action since breaking her ankle in February. Twell clocked 20:03 as she finished fourth – only six seconds behind the winner.