Friday 5 August marks the opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Throughout this prestigious event we will be following the progress of several of our students and alumni on their journey as part of the Olympic and Paralympic teams – the moment they’ve been training for is finally here and their dreams of sporting glory on the world stage is within touching distance.

The Olympics blog, originally used for updates on the 2012 games, has now gone live again so that you can keep up-to-date on news of our Nottingham athletes as they go for gold, as well as expert comment pieces and more.

We can’t wait to share the stories of our alumni and current students who successfully continued their studies at the University whilst training for the Olympics. Here is a list of our students and alumni taking part with the dates that they’ll be competing:

Badminton:

• Chris Adock for Team GB: Mixed doubles 11th August
• Adam Cwalina for Poland: Men’s doubles 11th August

Canoe Slalom

• Johny Akinyemi for Nigeria: 7 August
• David Florence for Team GB: 7 August men’s canoe single, and canoe double 8 August

Rowing

• Chris Bartley for Team GB: 6 August men’s coxless lightweight four
• Melanie Wilson for Team GB: 8 August women’s coxed eight

Hockey

• Nick Catlin, Harry Martin, George Pinner for Team GB: 7th August GB v New Zealand, 11 August GB v Australia, and 12 August GB v Spain

Rugby

• Chris Wyles for USA: 9 August USA V Argentina and USA V Brazil, 10 August USA v Fiji

Follow UoN Sport on Twitter for more highlights and to help us wish our Olympians good luck!

The University’s Department of Sport also has its own website dedicated to providing you with information on our Olympic heritage and the latest headlines from the Games.