GUY Learmonth last night launched a savage critique of the UK athletics lottery funding programme for creating pampered athletes who ‘put the icing on the cake before they’ve baked the cake’. The Scottish 800m runner must be the case in point then, consider he has been on the rise ever since they took his dough away.

Unsurprisingly, Learmonth took umbrage at being dropped from the world class performance programme back in November, feeling it owed more to the fact he had moved back to the Borders from the cosseted world of Loughborough. That is where he works now with his former coach Henry Gray, doing ad hoc sessions on dirt tracks and unused stretches of the A1, and conducting strength and conditioning work in his dad’s converted garage.

While he already feels he has ‘embarrassed the system’ by running quicker than ever before – he is now the second fastest Scot in history over the distance, behind Tom McKean - there will be further red faces all round if he can best the two members of England’s squad who are currently getting their chunk of lottery cash, Kyle Langford and Elliot Giles, in the Gold Coast. Hell hath no fury, it seems, like an 800m runner scorned.

“I was never going to get funding,” says Learmonth, back fit again after missing the chance to bid for a world indoors spot after injuring an ankle in training. “Simple as that. Because I was part of a system – and I failed under that system. For the year-and-a-half that I was under it, I didn’t perform. I didn’t run quicker than 1.47. I got injured. They threw everything at me.

“So I moved home, did everything in the sticks – and it’s not exaggeration," added the two-time British champion, who finished sixth over the distance at Glasgow 2014. "I had no track, no gym. Me and my dad converted his garage into a gym with some MMA mats, a speedball, a spinning bike, so we didn’t have to pay four or five quid a day to use the local gyms.

“We do everything off natural training resources. No medical support. And I came out and ran 1.45.1. And performed above anyone’s expectations in 2017. So I’ve had everything and not performed, then done it off nothing and performed at a very, very high level. To me, I feels like that has embarrassed that system. That’s my belief. And I left the coach who is part of the selection panel.

“The English boys will be at the Commonwealths. They’re on funding. They’re there. So I’ll just have to beat them again, won’t I? It does give me an incentive. But I always want to be the best, no matter what.”

The 25-year-old feels he has benefited from a return to Gray’s methods, because the culture down at Loughborough tends to be so obsessed with marginal gains that it forgets the big picture and the hard yards in the legs which are required to make it as a middle-distance runner.

“I think it has helped me to move back, because I work very differently from other athletes,” says Learmonth. “I feel like a lot of athletes are very one-dimensional. During my six years at Loughborough, I would bring a lot of different stuff to the table.

“I would bring in some of Henry Gray’s training. He’s my coach and he does aqua circuits in the pool, brings in boxers to train, throws in spin sessions and rowing sessions. Recently I told him I wanted to do some skipping and, within ten minutes, he was sending me skipping sessions from Floyd Mayweather.

“I definitely think people put the icing on the cake before they’ve baked the cake,” he added. “That’s a big, big problem. Lay the foundations first and then build on it.

“I do believe the one percent stuff helps. But in the group I was in, everyone was focusing on the one percents. The one percent stuff was taking up six hours of your day. What about the other 99 per cent? What about the running?

“We were doing three hours of drills and we hadn’t even done our morning run yet. For an endurance athlete, you should be out the door first, do your run and then worry about the marginal gains. Obviously all these things are beneficial. But you still need the core of what you do. Marginal gains are supposed to the marginal.

“People would get obsessed with the science stuff. Running on treadmills and getting on the VO2 max.

‘An 800 metre runner would get on the treadmill and say: “Oh, this test says I’m going to break the world marathon record. I was like: ‘You’re not. Because you’re an 800-metre runner who runs 1.50! You’re not going to break the marathon world record’. But they get obsessed with all those tests, the fine tuning.

“I will happily go on the treadmill and get hooked up, look like Bane from Batman, when I’ve run 1.43. Because getting from 1.45 to 1.43 is hard – but getting below that is incredibly hard. That’s when the science comes into it, not when you’re a 1.50 athlete for the 800. Just go and run. People forget that.”

If Learmonth has a point to prove in his Gold Coast match-up, the same applies in a more light-hearted fashion when it comes to the small matter of a long —rumoured fun run, perhaps over 400m, against with his close friend, Scotland rugby full back Stuart Hogg, whom he knows from their days together at Lasswade. “I’ve been talking to Hoggy after all of his games,” said Learmonth. “He’s had some injuries, been through a lot of adversity himself. I kind of let Hoggy do his thing. He gets right in the zone and is very family-orientated, as well. But we keep in touch most weeks and, every now and then, we have a two or three-hour face time. Which happened on Christmas Eve this year, actually!

“We’re still trying to get that race set up but it’ll be me who is quicker!” he added. “We’ll maybe get it on at the end of the season – we need everyone to get involved to make it happen.I’ll keep calling him out! We’ll run on the A1. Basically, he’s bottling it! Someone said he wanted to race me over 400. Why? I don’t know why anyone would even say that. I could run it backwards and still win!

“I think a 150m, Hoggy could win. Because he’s obviously very quick. Ten metres, he would have me. But who wants to see a race over ten metres? We could maybe have three races, different distances, a best of three. A 10, an 80 and 150. I just won’t let him tackle me. He would break me in two!’