Olympic torch to visit Iffley Road track

Members of the University have also been selected as official torchbearers and will carry the torch as it travels through Oxford on 9 and 10 July.

After travelling the streets of Oxford and attending the evening City ceremony at South Parks on the 9 July, the torch will formally leave Oxford on the morning of 10th July from the Roger Bannister Running Track at Iffley Road, where a designated torchbearer will run a circuit of the track and then exit onto Iffley Road where it will rejoin the ‘Olympic Torch Street procession’. The University will also hold a sports day for local schoolchildren at Iffley Road on 9 July.

Professor Richard Cooper and DPhil student Nicola Byrom were chosen to be torchbearers as part of Samsung’s nomination programme. Professor Cooper has been heavily involved in sport at Oxford for 45 years, initially as a student playing hockey and cricket and later as a key supporter of organised sport as a senior member of sports teams. He has recently retired as Chair of the University Sports Committee after 15 years during which time the sports service has trebled its size in terms of student sports provision, and still plays cricket for the University emeriti team.

Nicola Byrom is studying experimental psychology and has volunteered for a number of eating disorder-related projects. In 2009 she launched Student Run Self Help, a volunteer-run organisation which provides self-help groups across the country for students with eating disorders, and has raised more than £60,000 for the programme.

Maureen O'Neill, director of development at the Law Faculty, has also been chosen to carry the torch, as well as Verity Westgate, supervisor in the Bodleian Libraries' Radcliffe Camera, in recognition of her work over the past years fundraising for the charity Mind.

8,000 torchbearers will carry the Olympic Flame across the UK, beginning in Land’s End on 19 May 2012 and passing through more than 1,000 cities, towns and villages before arriving at the Olympic Stadium on 27 July 2012 to mark the start of the Games.