Top award and Games selection for young sports star?

Third year medical student, Morag MacLarty, was recently named Hi-Tec Athlete of the Year by Scottish Athletics, the sport's governing body. Soon after, she was selected to represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in March.

The talented middle-distance runner picked up the award and secured her place on the Commonwealth Games team following a successful year in which she won the European under 20s title and the Commonwealth youth championships for 1500m.

A member of the University's Excel Sports Scholarship team, at the age of 19, Morag was the youngest athlete to win the Hi-Tec Athlete of the Year award in its seven year history.

Her potential has also been recognised by the Scottish Institute of Sport, which has selected Morag for its squad of athletes with the ability to win medals at the highest level.

Morag's success follows the achievement of fellow university athlete Ross Clark, who was named sports person of the year in 2005 by SportDundee, an initiative run by Dundee City Council. The first year Applied Computing student has also been selected to swim for Scotland in the Games.

Commenting on her scottishathletics award Morag said, "It's really great to have this kind of recognition. It was a bit of a surprise because it includes all the senior athletes, people who have been competing in the world championships so I wasn't expecting to win this."

"I have had a really good season and everything has just come together. The sport itself is very rewarding and everyone is really friendly but this is an extra boost."

She also praised the Excel Sports Scholarship Programme which provides support to talented athletes studying at the University.

"It gives me lots of support behind the scenes and helps with things like negotiating time off to train," said Morag. "I'm quite lucky in that I have even more support now that I've been selected by the Scottish Institute of Sport and I'm sponsored by Nike so that all helps."

Swimming success

Karen Rigby (Economics) and Mairi Steward (Sports Biomedicine), both members of the Excel squad, achieved record breaking performances at the Scottish National Swimming Championships in January.

Karen Rigby is the new Scottish 50m butterfly (27.70 seconds) and backstroke (29.87) champion.

Both girls were members of the record breaking 4 x 50m medley relay and 4 x 50m relay teams.