Dublin student 'stunned' after leading team to victory on BBC's University Challenge

Irish Examiner

13-05-2025

A Dublin student has led a Cambridge team to victory in one of the UK's most prestigious and contested televised quiz competitions.
Oscar Despard captained a team from Christ's College Cambridge to victory in the final of the long-running BBC student quiz show University Challenge on Monday night.
The team trailed behind the University of Warwick for most of the final but took the lead in the final minutes, winning by just five points. The final score was 175 to Christ's Cambridge and 170 to Warwick.
Competing in the BBC series had been a childhood dream for Despard - made even better when the winning trophy was presented to the 22-year-old from Portobello and his team-mates Linus Luu (maths), Brendan Bethlehem (linguistics), and Anniko Firman (classics) by the actor Ian McKellen.
Speaking to Oliver Callan on RTÉ Radio 1, Despard said he kept the outcome 'very quiet' and that people were surprised by their win.
He said his father, William, who runs a bakery in Portobello, and his mother, Niamh Moran, a professor at the Royal College of Surgeons, were very proud of him.
Despard said there was a big turnout for a special event hosted by the college, where the quiz show was screened for the crowd in attendance, including the master and fellows of the college.
Back home in south Dublin, another screening took place at his former sailing club in Dún Laoghaire. He said his sister, who lives in England, was also watching on the night.
He said that despite the show being recorded some months back, he felt anxious all over again while watching it back for the first time, describing the last few minutes of the show as 'too close for comfort'.
'It's a show I have been watching for a long time, as has all the rest of the team, so we were all quite somewhat stunned but also happy to have won, especially under the circumstances,' he told Callan.
At the age of just 14, Oscar did a project for the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition on how gluten degrades during long fermentation in sourdough bread, and he later went on to win the Individual Prize at the exhibition in 2020.
The 22-year-old, who is studying for a PhD in molecular biology, attended Sandford Park School in Ranelagh and was one of just two Leaving Cert students in Ireland in 2021 to achieve nine H1s.