The Irish Olympic and World Championship rower was guest speaker at the Sports Bursaries awards event in Queen's Physical Education Centre where future local stars gained recognition.

Last week Queen's was announced as one of the training centres included in the Pre-Games Training Camp Guide for the 2012 Olympics, which is being distributed at the Beijing Games.

Archibald, a former Queen's student and Sports Bursary recipient himself said: "Olympic participation is something that every athlete aspires to and while it requires great dedication to compete at this level, it is something that is in the reach of some of the current batch of Sports Bursary students."

Dr Robert Gamble from Queen's Sport said: "Our Sports Bursary programme underpins the commitment of the University to providing High Performance support for our top athletes to help them achieve their sporting goals."