THE majority of Team Scotland's medal winners during the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games were home-trained with funding coming from the national agency north of the Border.
As athletes and fans bask in the glory of an unprecedented medal haul over the 11 days, breakdowns of the complex world of how Scotland's elite sportsmen and women fund their way to the top shows only 19 of the 59 podium winners are part of UK Sports' World Class Programme.
And even here, most continue to receive assistance in the form of facilities and expertise from the sportscotland Institute of Sport. Over the past four years, total sportscotland funding for the 17 Commonwealth Games disciplines comes to a more than £38 million total, a massive investment where aquatics secured more than £5.2m, judo almost £2.6m and badminton just shy of £3m.
The rewards for a sport like judo have been obvious, being Scotland's most successful discipline during the Glasgow Games. All of the 14 athletes selected for Team Scotland train at Ratho, with even gold, silver and bronze medal winners from England and Northern Ireland basing themselves at the Edinburgh camp for its expertise.
Dozens of competing athletes have also come through Stirling University's sporting programme, instigated in 2008.
Only seven medal winners are funded exclusively via UK Sport's World Class Programme, having been nominated by their national governing body and then assessed by agency as having credible medal potential for either Rio 2016 or Tokyo 2020, either individually or as part of a Team GB.
These include Bath-based pool star Michael Jamieson, gymnasts Frank Baines, Daniel Keatings and Daniel Purvis and cyclists Neil Fachie, Craig MacLean and Katie Archibald, who are clustered around Manchester.
The theory is, to compete with the best they have to train with the best.
But although these are considered Scotland's elite athletes, some of the nation's medal winners have returned north of the Border having been based in England.
Kirsty Gilmour, Imogen Bankier, and Robert Blair were all part of the UK badminton programme based in Milton Keynes but all have since chosen to return to Scotland to train here, with no detriment to their successes on the court.
Meanwhile, some English-based Team Scotland members are funded solely by sportscotland. Stewart Harris, chief executive of sportscotland, said: "The majority of Team Scotland athletes have been supported by the sportscotland institute of sport, with both funding and our support services playing a crucial part in their development.
"Our experts offer a wide range of services, including psychology, strength and conditioning, performance lifestyle, physiotherapy, and nutritionists, which helps the athletes to perform to their best on the world stage.
"Some athletes do eventually progress to the GB performance programme, with UK Sport taking on their funding, however, we continue to support them in Scotland when required."
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