Tremayne does his best to catch up with Sir Ming

Here’s a question — which of these men has run the 100  metres in the fastest time? Surprisingly, it’s not Tremayne Gilling, who is aiming for a place on Britain’s 2012 sprint team and has a personal best time of 10.25 seconds.

The sprint king is 70-year-old Sir Menzies Campbell, who twice clocked the distance in 10.20 seconds in 1967. The former Lib-Dem leader ran for Britain in the 1964 Tokyo Games, and held the UK 100 metres record for eight years, earning him the nickname, “the fastest white man on the planet”.

He and Gilling, 21, a Middlesex University student, got together for the launch of Universities Week, marking the contribution of universities to the London Games.

A spokesman said: “From research to sports development to training athletes, universities have contributed in a large number of ways.”

Olympic gold medallists who studied at British universities include Lord Coe, who went to Loughborough and won the 1,500 metres in 1980 and 1984, and former Bath Spa university student Jason Gardener, who won the 4  x  100metres relay in 2004.

This year’s other hopefuls include Perri Shakes-Drayton, a 400  metres hurdler, who studies sports science at Brunel, and Scott Moorhouse, a business management student at Southbank University and also a Paralympic javelin team hopeful.