The 125th staging of the Scottish Athletics Championships provides an opportunity to reflect on the fine history of what many regarded as sporting competition of the purest type.

The placement of athleticism at the centre of sporting endeavour is affirmed in the way the championships came about, effectively evolving from the games staged by football clubs including Rangers and Queen’s Park, while Scotland’s rugby clubs were prominent among the founding organisations behind the institution of the first Scottish Amateur Athletics Association, which put on the first national championships in 1883.

In the intervening years countless greats of sport and all walks of life have participated and, with grateful thanks to the marvellous sporting archivist and former top class middle distance runner Hugh Barrow, as well as The Herald’s former athletics correspondent Doug Gillon, a glance through some of those who took part in previous landmark stagings of the championship, offers a flavour of that:

1908 – The silver anniversary featured victories in the 200 and 440 yards by Wyndham Halswelle in the year in which he found himself at the centre of one of the earliest Olympic controversies which resulted in him becoming both the first Scot to win an Olympic title and the winner of the only ‘walkover’ to an Olympic gold medal, the result of a dispute over rules introduced to prevent the rough house tactics applied in his previous meetings with American rivals who, in turn, objected to being forced to run the 400 metres in lanes, the first time that had ever been insisted upon. Halswelle died aged just 32, both a sporting and war hero, decorated in the Boer War ahead of that Olympic triumph and killed seven years later during The Great War.

1933 – The winner of the mile in the golden anniversary gathering was Shettleston Harrier Tom Riddell, the dominant middle distance runner of the era, who had won the first of six successive titles in 1930. He twice set Scottish records for the mile and set others at 1000 yards, three-quarter mile and one and a half miles. A road engineer he was selected for the 1930 Empire Games and 1932 Olympics, but turned both down due to work commitments, speaking to the very different priorities of the era.

1958 - The winner of the three mile race at the 75th anniversary championships – the first of his four successes in six years - was another who famously turned down an opportunity to run for Britain. It had been reported in 1953 that after Britain had lost a six mile match against Germany, Norris McWhirter, who along with twin brother Ross was the driving force behind the popularisation of The Guinness Book of Records, told the London crowd that two British records, the Empire record, the UK all-comers record and six Scottish records had all been broken in the same race that afternoon by a man “...running, if you please, at some place called Cowal.” Ian Binnie was to break 21 Scottish records during his career and held the course record in virtually every Scottish road race.

1983 – The centenary championships appropriately marked by a return to form of the greatest Scottish track star of the era when Allan Wells claimed the 100 metres titles. He had not featured in that event in the previous two years and had picked up a silver in the 200 metres, behind Cameron Sharp – father of Lynsey – in the 200 metres the previous year, but having won it in four successive seasons from 1977-80, the last of those the year in which he claimed his Olympic title it was a fifth and final success.

2008 – It is remarkable that Eilidh Doyle’s victory at the 125th anniversary Scottish Athletics Championships was her most recent in her specialist discipline, as she completed her hat-trick of Scottish 400 metres hurdles titles. albeit she did return in 2011 to take the 400 metres title. Her status on the global stage was meanwhile confirmed when she was elected by team-mates to be GB captain at the recent World Championships where her relay silver medal took her past Yvonne Murray as Scotland’s most decorated major championship athlete.