Olympic and World Champion Clint Robinson is about to stage a remarkable comeback to the sport of canoe sprint when he competes at the NSW Sprint Championships this weekend. It will be the start of his campaign to qualify for his sixth Olympic Games in London this year, and despite giving away many years to his younger challengers, the 39-year-old is looking forward to competing this weekend.

“It’s been over four years since my last competitive race, but I feel fit and I’m looking forward to competing at NSW Champs, hopefully at the end of the day I’ll be fast and competitive,” said Robinson.

I think the event will give an indication amongst the top 5-7 paddlers of where everyone is at, but realistically there is still 8-9 weeks until Olympic selection so you can’t really read performance too much this early in the season.

Australian Canoeing’s Olympic qualifiers will be contested in Sydney in February, and the NSW titles this weekend give all paddlers a chance to shake out the Christmas break.

Later this month the second of the Grand Prix races will be contested, before the Australian nationals/Olympic qualifiers.

Robinson claimed the gold medal at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992 in the men’s K1 1000m, before taking the world title in Mexico city in 1994.

He collected bronze in the same event in Atlanta, but only made the semi finals in Sydney in 2000 before winning silver in the Men’s K2 500 in Athens. In Beijing he reached the semi finals on the K2 500m and K4 1000m before retiring.

This weekend’s NSW titles will feature Beijing gold medallist Ken Wallace, men’s Szeged K4 silver medallists Murray Stewart, David Smith, Tate Smith and Jacob Clear.

World Cup 2011 gold medallist Alana Nicholls and local Star Jo Brigden-Jones are just a host of names that will be on show looking to get off to a strong start in 2012.

NSWIS paddler Brigden-Jones will take part in a women’s training camp this week on the Gold Coast before flying down to Sydney on Friday and is looking to use the race meet to regain race fitness following the break.

I’m looking forward to familiarising myself with some general race preparation and studying the race plan once again.”

"A strong field will contest the Paddle NSW State Championships in Penrith.

“It will be good to get a measure of where I am at leading into the more important events, and hopefully race some fast times on the water.”

Racing will get underway on Saturday with the men’s K1 1000m heats.

Race start list available here: http://regattas.canoe.org.au/?events=1081

Read more about Clint Robinson's comeback here.