ELITE sport can be cruel and it is perhaps never more brutal than when it comes to Olympic selection. This is a truth Emily Maguire now knows only too well. Last Tuesday, Team GB’s hockey squad for Rio was announced and Maguire, who has been one of the Sunday Herald’s Six to Follow over the past year, didn’t make the cut. It was a bitter blow for the 28-year-old from Paisley, who was an integral member of the British team that won a glorious bronze at London 2012.

Every major hockey selection is announced in the same way; an email is sent simultaneously to every member of the squad giving them either the good or the bad news. It was, admits Maguire, a nerve-wracking wait.

“We knew exactly when to expect the email, so you’re just sitting waiting for that moment,” she says. “I was in my flat with my boyfriend. He’d taken the afternoon off work so he could be there with me, which was really nice. You’re just hanging on waiting for the email to come. It’s horrible.”

The email arrived and when Maguire realised she was not one of the 16 players in the squad, nor one of the three reserves, she was devastated. For the past four years, she has trained towards the single goal of representing Team GB at the Olympic Games this summer, so to have it snatched away was an excruciating disappointment.

“I was gutted,” the Scot says. “We found out a couple of weeks before the official announcement so I’ve gone through those hard emotions and I’m in an OK place now. The day of the announcement was pretty hard though. I tried to stay off social media but I didn’t really succeed in that.”

Maguire’s year has been mixed; she was a surprise omission from the British team for a series of Test matches in Australia in February but regained her place for a Test match series in Germany in April. With 12 players in the 31-woman squad knowing they would miss out on Olympic selection completely, Maguire was far from complacent.

“I knew that I was on the fringes of the team. I wasn’t really confident I was going to be picked because no-one’s ever really sure of that,” she says. “I was thinking I might be a reserve, that’s what I had prepared myself for. So when I found out I wasn’t even that I was like: ‘OK, it’s worse than I’d thought.’

“I was upset, that was the overriding emotion. There are things that have happened in the past that get me frustrated and I suppose verging on being angry, but I’d never class myself as an angry person.

“I was upset more than anything but there were other emotions too. I felt embarrassed as well. I’m a hockey player, that’s what people know me as, so I just felt kind of embarrassed that I hadn’t been selected.”

Maguire says the immediate reaction of many people on learning she will not be in Rio is to remind her of her previous successes. She was one of only two Scots who were part of the team in 2012 and so in wishing to comfort her, she is reminded that Olympic medal can’t be taken away.

But Maguire has spent the past four years eating, sleeping and breathing hockey, and while her medal will be a shining light when she looks back on her career after retirement, it does little to soften this blow.

“Having been to London and won a medal has definitely not made this any easier,” she says. “Obviously I’m hugely proud of everything I’ve done and I know that I’m so fortunate to have had all the experiences that I’ve had. So yes, in the future, I’ll look back on that and be proud but right now, it’s very difficult to have that broad view.

“For the past four years, I’ve been training for this one thing so to not get it is tough – it’s not as easy as just saying: ‘Oh well, I’ve achieved all of this in the past, so it’s fine.’”

MAGUIRE will return to training this week to help the team with their final preparations before they jet out to Rio, which is a situation that the Scot expects to be “a little bit awkward”.

But it is when the Games begin next month that Maguire anticipates will be a really tough time for her. She admits it is impossible to say how she will feel by the time GB play their first match but knowing she was so close to being there herself will, she says, make it difficult to be a spectator.

“I think it’ll be very hard to watch the matches in Rio,” she says. “I really want to support the team and by then, hopefully enough time will have passed that I’ll be OK.

“Of course I want the team do the very best they can. I want them to succeed because, ultimately, that’s what I’ve trained for all this time too. So if they don’t do well, that’s reflective of the programme over the past few years, of which I’ve been a part. Yes, I’ve missed out but I don’t want everyone to miss out.

“It’ll be hard not to imagine myself on the pitch though. I know it’s only natural to feel like that and to think: ‘If only I was there, I’d have done this or that.’ But I know that’s not the reality.”

Maguire is astute enough to realise that now is not the time to make any big decisions about her future. Having graduated in maths and statistics from the University of Glasgow in 2009, Maguire went straight into being a full-time hockey player, meaning she has never had a “proper job”. So while she may be uncertain about what her long-term future holds, one thing she does know is that she is going to have a well-deserved break.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do in the future but right now, I’m going to take some time off,” she says. “I’ll continue training in case anyone gets injured before the Olympics but I’m going to take a step back from hockey for the next little bit.

“After an Olympic cycle finishes, there’s always a bit of a lull, so I’ll take a break and consider my future. I don’t want to make any decisions now.”