While his Olympic Games debut four years ago may have been more about the experience, fencer Laurence Halsted insists he is heading to Rio with a medal very much on his mind.

Last week Halstead was named as part of a four-strong fencing squad to represent Team GB at this summer’s Olympics.

Fellow London 2012 teammates Richard Kruse and James Davis have also been chosen in the men’s individual and team foil events – with Marcus Mepstead a reserve in the team event.

Team GB were assured of representation in the foil back in February where a ninth-placed finish at the World Cup in Bonn meant that qualification was sealed by virtue of being the highest European world-ranked team outside the top four.

That was in contrast to London 2012 where the team was handed a place on account of Team GB being the host of the Games – with the men eventually losing to Italy at the quarter-final stage.

Halsted – whose father Nick competed for Team GB at Mexico City 1968 with his mother Clare doing likewise at Montreal 1976 – is after even more this time around though.

And the 31-year-old believes the fact that they have earned their place through qualification results shows they mean business.

“It feels great to be heading to my second Olympics after such a long qualification process,” he said.

“We’ve known we made the team for a couple of months now but to have it officially announced is a real milestone for us.

“The day we qualified was such a strange day. It was such an emotional rollercoaster ride because we were qualifying off the back of other people’s results on that day.

“We’d done enough up until that point to ensure we had a really good chance of qualifying but when it wasn’t in our hands at some points it was really tough for us.

“But it was incredible when we knew we had made it. We were all arm in arm and it was just an amazing feeling.

“We have a very different team this year compared to London and it’s a team that has come on leaps and bounds.

“We’re in with a realistic shot for a team medal and across the team in the individual event as well, so there is a lot more potential this time around.

“London was such a privilege to be competing in my home town and I think sporting-wise there will be a completely different atmosphere.

“British fencing has come on a lot since the last Olympics, and in the past year, we’ve beaten every other team that we could face in Rio so we feel that we have the potential to achieve great things.”

While fencing is his main sporting focus nowadays, that was not always the case with Halsted also playing rugby while studying social psychology at the University of Sussex.

Over 60 per cent of British Olympic gold medallists since 1992 having participated in BUCS sport, with 56 members of Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics competing for Great Britain at the World University Games.

And Halsted, who has a World University Games bronze medal to his name, admits university sport was crucial in helping to shape his future.

“University fencing was great for me because I was actually on a break from the international scene, so it was there that I picked the sport up again,” he added.

“My university was very helpful, and I got to compete against Richard (Kruse) at that level.

“Our universities happened to be in the same fencing league so we had some good battles on the university scene.

“I’ve trained with him since we were 10 or 11 years old so it feels pretty strange that we have been on this journey together and now we’re competing once again at an Olympics on the same team.

“Obviously university fencing was a very different standard of competition to what I was used to on the international stage, but it was great fun and we got to travel around a lot.”

British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) is the national governing body for Higher Education (HE) sport in the UK, organising leagues and competitions for more than 150 institutions across 52 different sports. Supported by Deloitte, BUCS offers programmes to athletes from a grass roots level through to Commonwealth and Olympic Games hopefuls www.bucs.org.uk