She may be studying in preparation for a career after she finishes playing badminton for a living, but Kirsty Gilmour acknowledged that she is in no way ready to give up the current day job after establishing herself as Scotland's greatest singles player yesterday.
Still only 20, Gilmour surpassed anything achieved by past national singles champions by reaching a Commonwealth Games final at the Emirates Arena. The University of the West of Scotland filmmaking and screenwriting student claimed afterwards to have been made momentarily speechless.
"It's amazing. For a writing student I can't find the words," she said after recording a 21-13, 21-19 semi-final win over Tee Jing Yi of Malaysia with an irresistible run of 10 successive points.
The drama of it all took its inevitable effect with her mum, Susan, dissolving into tears of joy and relief at every attempt to utter an opinion on the success of her daughter. That left it to Kirsty's uncle, Graeme, a high-performance sports manager by profession, to trot out the appropriate cliche. "She's writing her own scripts," he said with a laugh.
As she generally does, Gilmour did manage to find the right words - barring a wee slip up when admitting that sponsors' brew Gatorade was something she would not miss once the Games are over - to put her achievement into some sort of perspective.
"It's such a nice place to be and this is exactly how I planned it going in my head. Obviously I planned for it to go horrendously as well, but for it to turn out this way is just a dream," she said with a smile. "Now that I've got that medal guaranteed it's such a nice feeling, but that in no way means I am going to let up."
Having gone into the event as the No 2 seed, the Scot has lived up to that expectation. However, now there is more after Canada's Michelle Li, the third seed, produced a shock against PV Sindhu in the other semi-final to repeat her victory over the Indian in the team event a week earlier.
"At this point it's anyone's game. Michelle's proved she can consistently beat Sindhu, having beaten her twice in seven days. I'm under no illusions about how good a player she is," said Gilmour.
"I've never played Michelle so it'll be very interesting. I'm sure she's got some notes on me and I'm sure we've got some notes on her, so I think it's going to be tough tomorrow."
Maybe so but Gilmour had been confronted with a similar problem to Sindhu since she, too, had lost to her much lower-ranked semi-final opponent in the quarter-final of the team event seven days earlier.
Indeed the Scot had taken a bit of a drubbing from Tee Jing Yi in a match which was pivotal in that team encounter with the eventual champions. There was even a hint of an apology to her team-mates as Gilmour reflected on the difference a week had made. "I don't think I was quite ready last week," she said. "I just knew there was such a slog to go, but now at this stage of the competition I can just afford to give it my all.
"Not to say that I was holding back in the team competition because at the time I was giving it my all, but my head just wasn't in the right place. I was much more prepared this time around."
There was a different feel to the match from the off yesterday as Gilmour took three of the first four points and, while she slipped 8-5 behind in the first game before giving herself some real work to do when 19-11 down in the second, that inspired closing 10-point sequence spoke to her renewed confidence.
Of course, if a first badminton gold since Billy Gilliland and Dan Travers claimed the men's doubles title at Scotland's last home Games 28 years ago is to be achieved, she must clear her head once again ahead of today's match.
However, if there was any residual guilt about that performance in the team event it should have been assuaged fully by yesterday's victory since, as well as her individual success, Gilmour ensured that Badminton Scotland had achieved its pre-Games target of winning a medal. That should, in turn, guarantee that the funding is retained and perhaps even enhanced for the elite Scottish badminton programme.
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