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Olympic bronze medallist Helen Reeves explains how to beat the 2012 slalom course

"This is not a formality at all," he continues. "There's a lot riding on it. I've just moved here from Nottingham to use this course. If I then wasn't to make the team for the year, that's a bit of a disaster: I've just invested in training here for the year, and I'm not even on the team.

"Every year it's a really big thing. All the parents on the bank, too - you can see them and they're just as on edge about it."

Walsh was never in too much danger of missing the team but that's because he's incredibly good, with his alongside a clutch of world and European medals. He has the skills and experience to cope with races like these.

But for fringe athletes, looking to break into the team and maybe clinch some precious funding for the first time, hearts barely leave mouths all weekend.

That was particularly the case last weekend as a vicious wind ripped through the course. Wind causes untold chaos to canoe slalom races: it sends the gates - through which canoeists must pass - swirling in the breeze, turning a course which was already one of the world's toughest into an unpredictable lottery.

"Conditions were very difficult," says Walsh. "The wind means you can't be accurate and paddle like normal. You always have to have a margin of error and leave room around the poles [which make up the gates].

"On my final run, the wind blew a pole and the judges deemed I didn't get my head around it in time [a race-ending 50-point penalty]. That meant I was effectively last instead of first.

"Because I'd secured my place in the team after days one and two I was racing with more aggression. If I hadn't, I'd have played it safe and given the poles more respect. But there are other people who maybe haven't the luxury of that speed in the bag and then they've got to push it. It's really, really hard on them."

Walsh, 33, is talking from the comfort of a wicker sofa on the pristine decking which marks out from your average canoe slalom course. If the wind would die down and the rapids disappear, we could be in a Caribbean retreat. Britain's top kayakers may be paddling for their futures in 30mph gusts, but at least they're doing it in impressive surroundings.

"When I was a youngster, we had a generator and floodlights that we'd have to put up every night to go training up in Scotland, in the freezing cold, on some tiny little ditch," says Walsh.

"Now we're at these amazing venues that sell Starbucks coffee. The sport's moved on at the top level. There is this hi-tech stuff like the [which ferry competitors from the bottom of the course to the top, without leaving their boats]. I'm amazed how many people stand and watch us going up the conveyor belt, even when there are other competitors going down the white water course."

But Walsh feels there is something still to be said for getting changed by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, nice though the decking and conveyor belts are. He's hopeful that Lee Valley's comparative riches will come to be seen by children eager to learn the sport as the reward, rather than the norm.

"You need the grounding on the smaller water first," he says. "You can't just jump onto the water out there on the Olympic course, you'd get blown away. But it doesn't matter where you do it. When you get into the sport and into a boat and on the water, you've got that freedom to go where you want.

"You're not stuck to a linear sport - that was a big appeal to me, as was the play element. When you're learning to deal with whitewater you're surfing, you're playing in the water to get that feel, that subtle touch for the water. That hooked me."

Walsh hasn't had in Britain lately. His silver medal in Athens always crops up when he does get mentioned, but - who paddles in the C1 single canoe category (using one blade where Walsh uses two) - now enjoys most of the limelight having earned silver at Beijing 2008, where Walsh struggled.

"Within the sport I get more attention but the British media like to look at the more recent Olympic medallist," says Walsh. "I still find it really odd that I get referred to as an Olympic silver medallist all the time. That was seven years ago - it doesn't mean much now.

"You have to look at the results in a much shorter time-frame. I could have told everyone Dave Florence was a big favourite for a medal in Beijing but he wasn't getting any media attention just because he hadn't been to an Olympics before."

Walsh is a little more circumspect, however, when asked to predict his own fortunes this coming year. Next month brings the in Spain, followed by July's test event on the London 2012 course and September's in Slovakia.

He says: "At the moment there are two guys dominating men's kayak: of Italy and of Slovenia. But form fluctuates and they're beatable - I've had one race against them this year and I beat them.

"I'd love to win this year's World Championships. My first concern is to get the plans in place to train effectively, stay injury and illness-free. I have to get myself in good shape technically and physically so I can sit on the start line and know within myself that if I have a good run, I can win.

"And then I have to have that good run."