Melbourne, Australia - Gruelling 35km sessions on a treadmill primed Commonwealth 50km Walk champion Nathan Deakes for a dramatic comeback from career-threatening injury to stake his claim yesterday for a medal in the 50km Olympic Race Walk.

Canberra-based Deakes, 26, became the 11th fastest in history at the punishing road event and smashed Simon Baker's 14-year-old Australian record by four minutes in an Olympic selection trial in Melbourne.

His phenomenal time of 3:39:42 is a huge boost for Deakes personally and for Australian athletics which has been damaged by recent controversies including a $1.3million operating loss forcing cutbacks at Athletics Australia, an inquiry into distance running national coach Said Aouita, and the perennial inability of too many Australians to peak at the last World Championships in Paris in August.

Deakes, 2001 Goodwill Games 20,000m and 2002 Commonwealth 20km & 50km Race Walking champion, missed Paris while recuperating from an April 30 operation on the hamstring muscles of his left leg to clean up scarring around the sciatic nerve.

While Sydney Olympic champion Robert Korzeniowski set the world best of 3:36:03 in Paris and led four others to go faster than Deakes, who was fourth over 20km at the 2001 World Championhips in Edmonton, was training on a treadmill at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Coached by a former Sydney rival, Brent Valance, the Geelong-born Deakes logged up to 35km at a session on the treadmill.

"I had a couple of 200km weeks. I was determined to burn that machine out,'' Deakes told yesterday.

"That made me mentally tougher. It's been a long hard road back but I'm glad to do my bit for the sport at a time when there's been so many negatives.''

Though Deakes won the 20km and 50km titles at last year's Manchester Games, the part-time university commerce student remains unsponsored.

"I'm supported by my wife, Antoinette, who works in marketing and communications for Seeing Machines which has created lifesaving computer technology for motor vehicles."

With Luke Adams, who was a revelation placing fifth in the Paris 20km and Jane Saville, 11th in Paris, Deakes is leading the strongest event group in Australia's 2004 Olympic athletics team.

"We could have three really good goes at the medals in Athens next year."