Sir Roger Bannister makes his speech at the opening of the new athletics track in Maidstone

One of Britain's greatest athletes and the world's first four-minute miler, Sir Roger Bannister CBE, officially opened a new, eight-lane floodlit athletics track at Sutton Valence School, near Maidstone on Tuesday.

The £800,000 track, funded jointly by Sutton Valence School and Maidstone Borough Council, will provide a world-class training facility for local athletes in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics – and for many years beyond.

The track, which incorporates training facilities for long jump, high jump, javelin and shot, will benefit members of Medway & Maidstone Athletic Club, who will train there five evenings a week, as well as pupils at the school and the local community.

Sutton Valence School is already an official training centre for the 2012 London Olympic Games, for athletics, badminton, basketball, fencing and archery.

Headmaster Bruce Grindlay told guests at the track: “This is a facility which will serve our school and the community, sharing and enhancing both state and independent school traditions.

"This facility will breathe new life and purpose into this part of the school, allowing young people to benefit from it, to learn from it and to excel on it.”

Sir Roger fired a starting pistol to officially open the track, after which Martin Brockman and Natalie Gray, from Medway & Maidstone Athletics Club, joined Sutton Valence School students Emma Baxter and Simon Goldsworthy, in a four-man relay.

The quartet notched up a mile in 4 minutes 19 seconds – behind Sir Roger’s groundbreaking record, set when he ran into the history books on May 6 1954, when he ran the same distance in just 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.