THEIR entrance was accompanied by a distinctive tinkling sound which resonated from the six-strong medal collection - an impressive three apiece - hanging around their necks.
Over the course of five days last week, Daniel Keatings and Daniel Purvis rewrote the record books for Scottish gymnastics at the Commonwealth Games with a series of firsts. Keatings will leave the Games with a gold and two silvers, while Purvis has the full set: gold, silver and bronze.
Last Tuesday came a historic team silver for the pair alongside Frank Baines, Adam Cox and Liam Davie. A day later, Keatings became his country's first-ever man to win a medal in the individual all-around competition, taking silver, and following that up on Thursday with gold on the pommel horse. Purvis, meanwhile, took bronze on rings before going on to claim gold on the parallel bars on Friday.
As the Games draw to a close later today, the pair are still attempting to process the enormity of their accomplishments. "It's sunk in what we've done on an individual level but don't think it's sunk in what we've done for Scottish gymnastics," said Keatings. "We've broken so many records: first-ever team medal, first individual all-round medal, first gold on pommel horse, first gold on parallel bars. They're such massive achievements and that's not going to sink in for a few weeks."
The 24-year-old, who hails from Corby in Northamptonshire, competes for the host nation on account of his father Robert hailing from Edinburgh. He missed out on being part of the bronze medal-winning Team GB quintet at London 2012 through injury, but two years on has described Glasgow as making up for "the Games I never had".
Beside him, Purvis, 23, was equally thrilled at his feat of a collecting a medal of every colour. "I'm so happy," he said. "I've not had a complete set of medals before. I've loved my first Commonwealth Games - it's been fantastic."
Southport-based Purvis, whose mother Denise comes from Dundee, said that his team silver possibly meant more than his individual achievements.
"It was the first team medal Scotland has ever had and it felt like a flashback to the Olympics as well," he said. "There was a lot of pressure to try to deliver. Being with your team-mates is always more special, getting a medal between everyone."
He said the reaction of the home crowd was the icing on the cake after such a stellar result. "It's been lovely, amazing," Purvis added. "The Hydro was fantastic for every gymnast. A lot of times when an athlete might not have done so well, the crowd just picked them up."
Until Glasgow, Scotland had won only three artistic gymnastics medals at the Games: gold for Steve Frew on rings and bronze on vault for Barry Collie in 2002 and high bar bronze for Adam Cox four years later. That tally now stands at eight.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article