A&E doctor Tim Brabants deserves a medal..to go with the gold he won in Beijing; OLYMPICS A TRUE BRITISH HERO.

Byline: Oliver Holt

TIM BRABANTS is standing in the crowded reception of a busy NHS hospital, watching his world go by.

There are patients being pushed through in wheelchairs, others with white patches taped over their eyes.

Some walk slowly and haltingly, clutching the arm of a loved one tightly, worry etched on their faces.

Others lie back on gurneys, hooked up to tubes, their arms attached to drips, their faces pale and drained.

Maybe that is the strangest thing about the change that has come over the life of this man who stands in the lobby of the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham - in his grey scrubs with a brand new stethoscope round his neck.

Stranger even than the fact that seven months ago he was being feted as one of the golden heroes of Britain's glorious achievements in the Beijing Olympics and now he is working in anonymity.

Brabants' world was once about health, about competing with athletes in the prime of their life, about being the best there was in flat water canoeing.

Now it's about helping the sick and saving lives. It's about being a doctor again. It's not about individual glory. It's about helping others.

One by one, Britain's other golden heroes of Beijing are embracing the limelight again.

Rebecca Adlington is competing in the British swimming championships in Sheffield.

James DeGale was at a press conference in London yesterday to publicise the second fight of his professional career.

Sir Chris Hoy will miss the World Track Cycling Championships in Poland this month through injury but he has hardly been out of the news since Beijing anyway.

But Brabants, 32, is working unpaid as a super-numerary in the Accident and Emergency Unit at the QMC.

He revels in his anonymity. No one has asked him to bring his gold medal into work and that suits him fine. People rarely recognise him.

Even his name badge is turned the wrong way round, although he says that is not intentional.

"If I was working in the corporate world, there might be a kudos factor to being an Olympic gold medallist," Brabants said, "but I like to keep a low profile when it comes to my working life.

"I want to get on and be the best doctor I can be without the sports side of things affecting what I do."

He still receives Lottery funding and still trains every day, usually in the early mornings, but soon he will have to decide whether he wants to compete in the London Olympics or commit himself to medicine full time again. He began working at the QMC last month. His previous stint as a doctor, in the A&E department at Jersey General Hospital, ended in February 2006, when he left to throw himself into the preparations for Beijing, where he won Britain's first-ever gold in flatwater canoeing.

"One of the reasons I enjoy working in A&E so much is that there are a lot of comparisons with how sport makes me feel," Brabants said.

"They both require good teamwork, dedication, thinking, bit of adrenaline and having to respond to things appropriately and quickly.

"In canoeing, you have your race plan but you are still responding to what is happening around you. It is about working under pressure in stressful environments."

He becomes uneasy when he is asked to go into detail about the work he performs at the A&E. Some of it involves working in the resuscitation section.

But he covers the whole gamut of cases: old ladies with broken hips, drunks injured in street fights, a rugby player with a broken arm, victims of road traffic accidents.

And from being a man at the top of his field - the European, World and Olympic champion in flatwater canoeing - he is now closer to the bottom of the pile.

"In the same way I look at people in sport and admire them,"

Brabants said, "I do the same with doctors.

"I am surrounded by good people here. In sport, I have been at the top of my game for so long and if I am not winning, I am second or third.

"When I come back to reality here, I am back at the bottom of the career ladder. You have got the consultants and the registrars and the other speciality trainees around you who are far more experienced than me and you learn from them.

"I missed being a doctor. The colleagues I studied with at medical school for five years, you know they are all progressing in their careers.

"Most of them will be first-year consultants now. I am probably six or seven years off that.

"They have enjoyed their medical careers but they say I am doing the right thing. I can only do my sport while I am young but I have got the rest of my life to move up the medical career ladder."

In sport, his career is about medals and accolades and championships and praise. At the A&E in Nottingham, Brabants shies away from any talk of personal glory.

He says again and again that he is part of a team, that helping people is part of the job.

So how many lives has he saved since he turned to medicine again? Dr Brabants smiled. "I don't keep a tally," he said.

One of the golden heroes of Britain's Olympic achievements is now working in anonymity

CAPTION(S):

GOLDEN MOMENT Tim Brabants wins the K1 1,000metres in Beijing; DR PADDLER Brabants in the A&E and, inset, on the rostrum in Beijing