UCD were extremely proud to see a number of their current students and graduates, 6 in total compete across a number of disciplines in what was a fantastic Olympic Games in London.

Arthur Lanigan O'Keeffe finished in 25th place in modern pentathlon. The 20-year-old UCD Sports & Exercise Management student and Ad Astra Elite Scholar was the final athlete to be added to Ireland's Olympic squad, called up to the team only two weeks before the start of the Olympics when a Polish competitor tested positive for a banned substance.

The Dublin student was lying 18th, out of 36 contenders, following the fencing, swimming and show jumping disciplines.

Some shaky shooting, however, in the final combined event moved him out of the top 20 - his targeted final position. He confirmed afterwards that he intends to compete in Rio, in four years time, and hopes to medal there. His best result at this Olympics was in the 200m swim, where he finished ninth. He finished 29th overall in fencing, and 20th in horse-riding.

The gold medal was won by David Svoboda of the Czech Republic. Silver went to Zhongrong Cao, of China with Adam Marosi, of Hungary, taking the bronze.

"I went into the competition with no expectations and came out with a satisfactory result," he told RTÉ. "I gained a lot of experience and I'm really happy."

Performance Director Lindsey Weedon said Lanigan-O'Keeffe had performed really well in his first Olympics, starting reasonably well in the fencing discipline, and then swimming strongly to finish ninth, which moved him up to 21st overall after two events.

She also praised his horsemanship saying;

"He had a few time faults, but it was an assured performance on the horse. Arthur is young, and he's not had the best of preparation. He found out just two weeks' ago he was competing.

“For him, and Natalya Coyle, we are really looking to Rio. To even qualify here was huge for our programme."

For Annalise Murphy, the 22year old UCD Science student, the result was a little more painful. She finished fourth overall after a fantastic start and just one or two slips that took her out off the podium.

Annalise came first in the first four races but slipped a number of places, down as far as 19th in the 6th race. Annalise Murphy suffered the disappointment of a fifth place in the Laser Radial Sailing medal race to finish fourth overall and therefore marginally miss out on the medal. Her three rivals China’s Lijia Xu, Marit Bouwmeester (Holland) and Evi van Acker (Belgium) took the first three places and the gold, silver and bronze medals in that order.

Annalise had led around the first mark but lacked speed downwind that would ultimately cost her dearly. It was a wonderfully brave effort and this particular race notwithstanding a brilliant Olympics for Murphy. The shortened course was always going to place a high premium on maximising choices made in terms of the elements and her rivals proved much quicker in the downwind legs.Belgium’s Van Acker moved ahead of Murphy in the final upwind and remained ahead of the Irish sailor for the remainder of the race to take bronze.

A tearful Murphy admitted: “I lost out a bit on the first downwind. I went left and it didn’t work. There was less wind and all the girls got by me so I think I was close to last after the first lap and I really fought to get back into the race but it was just hard and three girls that beat me; they’re all so good.

“It came down to the top five in the regatta fighting out for the top five in that race so anything was going to happen, down to the last lap and things just didn’t work my way. I think I kept on losing out. I kept on going to the left-hand side where there was less wind so that kind of caused me to lose out. Looking back it seems simpler now; if I’d just done something differently but at the time…

“I had a brilliant week. My first two days of this event, nobody could beat me so I don’t think it gets much better than that. I’m only 22. All the girls are much older than me in the fleet. I’m going to work so hard for 2016 and hopefully I’ll be able to come good then.

(The support) It’s brilliant. They all seem to have been kind of shielding me from what’s going on at home. I guess it’ll be brilliant to just see all my family and friends. Loads of my friends have flown over so it’ll be great to see them all. (On whether she look forward positively) I can but I think it’s going to be hard for a while.”

UCD had a firm graduate representation at London 2012 with Ger Owens a Graduate of Geography & completed a Masters in Smurfit competing in Sailing. Ger along with team mate in the mens 470 class, Scot Flanigan finished 23rd overall with a net total of 173.

Deirdre Ryan, a former scholarship student and who attended UCD at both undergraduate and post graduate levels competed in the High Jump. Deirdre was eliminated from the high jump after a third failure at 1.90m. She successfully jumped 1.80 and 1.85, but missed three attempts at the next mark to miss out.

Derval O’Rourke, again a former sports scholar and student at both undergraduate (Arts), post graduate (Dip. in Business) and Masters levels, competed in the 100m hurdles. Derval made a fantastic start to 100m hurdles semi-final, but failed to qualify for the final after fading badly in the latter stages of the race to finish fifth behind Australia’s Sally Pearson in 12.91.

Joanne Cuddihy, a Graduate of Medicine and former scholar throughout undergraduate studies competed in the 400m and 4x400m relay. Joanne did not advance to the final of the 400m as she finished 5th with a semi-final time of 51.88. In the 4x400m the team did not make it out of the heats but set a new seasons best of 3:30:55.

UCD look forward to the next Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, where UCD’s and some of the Country’s finest young athletes are currently training and developing in hopes of competing on the world stage.

Congratulations to the fantastic achievements of all the Athletes involved.