大象传媒

Beijing

At around 8am on Saturday morning, a pack of Britain's young canoeists gathered at the National Sports centre at Bisham Abbey to watch power his way down the flat water of the Shunyi lake.

The (remaining) champagne had been on ice since Friday, when .

"In the first two strokes there was no doubt I was going to win. No-one was going to come past me, I felt fantastic," he'd said after his win over 1,000m and hopes were high he would become team GB's fourth double gold medallist at this Games over the 500m course.

Sadly, he was out-paddled to the gold in a thrilling finish ("you could throw a doily over the three of them" according to Ben Dirs, our text commentator on duty at the time).

But he did to make sure the sport exceeded its 2008 medal target of two (Brabants' pair plus ), to cue more corks popping among his fellow paddlers.

And it's not just because Brabants is apparently "one of the nicest, most humble, self-effacing elite athletes you could meet," according to Anne Ferguson, U23 development manager at the .

"Because he is such a nice guy and great ambassador for the sport, everyone in British canoeing was quietly hoping he would achieve his dream," she says.

Brabants, a hospital doctor who has worked in A&E on the island of Jersey among other places, with aspirations of becoming a surgeon, had won bronze in Sydney - but missed out in Athens despite setting a world record in qualifying.

He'd decided to go for broke for 2008, putting his medical career on hold and spending the last 12 months as a full-time elite athlete, training twice a day almost every day either at Bisham, or Nottingham Canoe Club or on the River Thames at Teddington in Surrey, near his home in Walton-on-Thames.

At this point I must declare an interest, being a fellow product of

The small suburban sprawl near the start of the M3 in west London is known for only a few bits of trivia - Julie Andrews was born there, , came from down the road, while the football team Walton and Hersham did once pull off an FA Cup shock (it was 1975).

But Walton now has an Olympic gold medalist to add to its biography, as does Brabants.

The expectation was he would now give up his paddling career to concentrate full-time on medicine.

But judging by what he said on Friday, it sounds as though the 31-year-old has got the 2012 bug: "London is definitely on the cards now. Don't be surprised to see me in London ready to represent Great Britain again."

Ferguson has no doubt Brabants has the ability and stamina to play a significant role in the team's drive to the London Games.

Perhaps more importantly, as veteran now of three Olympics, he could also become a Sir Steve Redgrave-type figurehead to the flotilla of talented young paddlers in the U23 team run by Ferguson.

"As with many British athletes, I am sure the lure of 2012 will creep into his thinking," says Ferguson.

"Tim is such an athlete I have no doubt he could easily carry on to 2012. He is blessed with amazing physiological qualities."

To be any good in canoeing you need a huge engine, big muscles but most importantly you need great technique, arguably even more so than in rowing, because the paddle is not fixed like an oar.

"The key is putting maximum downward pressure on the blade and exerting the most power to pull the boat past the paddle," said Ferguson.

To put it even more simply - canoeing is a sitting down sport, a genre at which we now know Britain is very good.

However, unlike cycling, sailing and rowing, which between them have delivered the bulk of Team GB's medal haul, canoeing is still a relatively untapped medal pool.

Some Olympic sports, such as team sports like hockey, offer only two golds, while others, such as athletics, require a massive variety of skills and are therefore hard to target.

But canoeing is a very focused discipline in which it may be possible to clean up.

The Chinese knew this, which is why they hired a coach from Germany - one of the top paddling nations - to help them target the 16 Olympic gold medals on (12 on flat water, four in slalom).

However Joseph Capousek, who had helped Chinese paddlers win 18 golds at the last four Olympics, left two months before Beijing Games .

This time around they won one solitary gold.

In Britain, the sport definitely has potential to become more successful.

There are a healthy number of grassroots participants - 1.5m, who range from recreational paddlers to white-water specialists.

And it can share not just the elite performance blueprint of rowing, but many of its facilities too.

Even before Brabants' second medal, Sport England had announced a 拢2.1m upgrade of the gym at Bisham (used by Britain's hockey players, rowers and canoeists) to include among other things new indoor canoeing machines.

And Ferguson says the BCU now has a very strong case for even more investment.

"It is a very good position to be in when we sit down to begin negotiations with UK Sport.

"Hopefully, we will have become one of their priority sports and they will have the confidence to invest in us knowing we will deliver the results.

"We are comparatively low-profile compared to rowing - but the potential is there for canoeing to make a big contribution to 2012."