Four alumni are participating in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Reyare Thomas (’14), Sayon Cooper (’98), Doug Ferguson (’83), and David Ramsey (’81), though they had different assignments, were insiders to the biggest athletic event in the world.

Thomas represented Trinidad and Tobago on the women’s track team and placed fifth in the first heat for the women’s 200m race on Tuesday, which wasn’t fast enough to qualify for the final round. She also competed in the women’s 4x100m relay final on Friday night and placed fifth with Trinidad and Tobago with a time of 42:12, less than a second shy of winning an Olympic medal. At ACU, Thomas was the 2014 Southland Conference winner in the 60m and 200m dashes, the 200m school record holder with a time of 23:51, and an NCAA Division II all-American in three events. After graduation, she became a bronze medalist as part of her nation’s relay team at the 2015 Outdoor World Championships in Beijing, China.

Cooper is the current head Olympic track and field coach for his homeland Liberia and was also an Olympic sprinter for his nation twice – at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he ran the 100m and the 4x100m relay, and at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where he ran the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay. At ACU, he won the 1997 NCAA Division II championship in both the 100m and 200m dashes.

Ferguson is a longtime golf writer for the Associated Press and covered the men’s Olympic golf course as Great Britain’s Justin Rose took home the gold medal. Ferguson also covered women’s Olympic golf as the final round teed off on Saturday, and South Korea’s Inbee Park won gold. Read up on all his coverage here.

Ramsey is an award-winning sports columnist and travelled to Rio to cover ten different events at his fifth Olympic games for The Gazette newspaper based out of Colorado Springs, Colo. He previously covered Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008, London in 2012 and the winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.