It takes as much courage to win as it does to fail, or so it seemed yesterday.

For Scotland, this was the most brilliant opening; the 10 medals being the most accumulated in a single day at any Commonwealth Games.

The curtain rose on brutal and bloody proceedings: thud and blood on the tatami at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre where Scotland won six medals in an awesome day of controlled and courageous aggression.

If judo has never experienced a day like it, neither has Scotland in any previous Games. It was brutal, and it was braw, and so were the crowd. When English success on the mat was celebrated by Jerusalem, it was courteously received. We pray this continues.

This was sport red in tooth and claw. Scotland's first gold medallist, Kimberley Renicks, knocked one opponent unconscious. The Coatbridge woman took just 84 seconds to win, before watching her sister, Louise, follow up with a second gold. Kimberley had needed a shoulder operation, but her team has a talismanic hero as a manager. Former world champion Graeme Randall won Commonwealth gold in 2002, fighting with a broken bone in his neck.

Egos were bruised in the pool as Ross Murdoch claimed 200 metres breaststroke gold, a medal some already had hung around the neck of the Olympic silver medallist Michael Jamieson, upstaged in his home city by Balfron's Murdoch who also took his rival's Scottish record.

Murdoch bravely swam into the unknown, faster than ever before, twice in one day. Jamieson, though gutted, was gracious in defeat.

The day evoked echoes of Kipling, the poet not the cakemaker. There was enough of that at the opening ceremony.

It is 119 years since Rudyard Kipling penned arguably Britain's favourite poem, If. He wrote it in the heady days of Britain's Empire in its prime; his formative teenage years influenced by the Boer War and the Anglo-Zulu conflict, the battles of Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana.

The stoic, stiff upper-lip which he lauded, is a watchword, and it was in evidence as triumph and disaster lurked in the pool, but were met in Kiplingesque style, two impostors treated just the same.

Hannah Miley carried her burden of expectation with glorious abandon, winning the 400m individual medley in Games record time.

Miley's father, Patrick, once reminded me that he had known tragedy in his life - the death of Hannah's little brother. He put sport in perspective, insignificant by comparison.

Jamieson has had at the back of his mind, a literally heart-stopping moment in training. Every one of judo's six medallists will tell you of injuries, from the surgery on Kimberly Renwick's right shoulder to a catalogue of boken bones among her team-mates that reads like several chapters of Gray's Anatomy.

We saw athletes contain fear, and some, perhaps, overwhelmed. It was there at the opening ceremony when Susan Boyle faltered, and then triumphed. It was there yesterday, and we shall see it repeated.

Fear is always waiting in the wings, but the Scotland team have been taught to control and harness it. Misha Botting is one of two psychologists on the Scottish backroom team, based at the sportscotland Institute of Sport. The Muscovite spent 11 years with the Bolshoi and Scottish Ballet. He has worked with high performance swimmers for six years and Scotland's performances in the pool last night vindicate his assertion that this is the best-prepared Scottish swim team ever "physically and mentally . . . and the best supported in physiotherpy and physiology."

All negatives are channelled out. "Focus is narrowed down to achieve optimal perfromance. The key is consistency. The same pre-race preparation for every race, heats or final, whether it's a training camp in Aberdeen or the Games here in Glasgow."

The aim is to get into a cocoon which permits no extraneous thought. Sometimes it involves listening to music. Jamieson did so at the Olympics, but not last night, and the ultimate tune of glory remained silent for him.

Botting advocates "concentrating on visualising the process of speed through the water, achieveing high speed - not visualising winning, but the process. That's what makes one more successful. There should be nothing else on their horizon. If they are thinking, doubts can get into the mind. It's about performing intuitively, not a cognitive process."

Moving on as times go down in the pool

NEVER had three Scots filled the three fastest lanes on the starting blocks for a Commonwealth swimming final as they did last night for the 200 metres breaststroke.

Two Scots on the podium is rare

- Ross Murdoch and Michael Jamieson - but far from unique. Athletes Ian Stewart and Ian McCafferty did the same in 1970 at 5000m with world record holder Ron Clarke buried in the pack.

In Scottish swimming's annus mirabilis, at Melbourne in 2002, David Carry and Euan Dale took gold and silver in the 400m individual medley. Dunky Wright and David Robertson took marathon silver and bronze in 1934, and Yvonne Murray and Liz McColgan won Auckland silver and bronze in 1990 at 3000m. In that race Skye's Karen Macleod was fourth.

Last night it was Australia's former world record holder, Christian Sprenger, who was left in the Scots' wake.

Beginning of the end for Farah?

MO FARAH, the double Olympic and World 5000 and 10,000 metres champion, seems fated to end his career without a Commonwealth medal.

His withdrawal yesterday from a second successive Hampden race is a huge boost to rivals. Even Kenya's endurance lords fear him, but at 31 Farah boasts only a humble Commonwealth best of ninth, from 2006.

Due to run the 5000m on Sunday and 10k a week today, he is now intent on the same double at next month's European Championships, illness permitting. That may confirm whether his marathon debut has extracted a costly toll. Does this herald the beginning of the end?