IT was under the main stand of Berlin's Olympic stadium that I heard a great sporting truism, eloquently and stylishly expressed by Kai Long, son of the 1936 Berlin Olympic long-jump silver medallist, Lutz Long.

With Adolf Hitler a spectator, Long became famous for the sportsmanship he displayed in his head-to-head with the legendary Jesse Owens. The American was in danger of failing to qualify for the final when the epitome of Aryan manhood advised his black rival to move his check mark back. Owens did so, and went on to complete a sweep of four golds which has never been surpassed.

The pair became great friends, and when the German died in Italy during World War II, Owens' correspondence with his family continued. In a moving letter, Long had urged Owens to find his son, and explain how things can be between men on this earth - the message that humanity could rise above creed and ideology.

At the 2009 World Championships, the Owens and Long families were reunited before the long-jump final. I asked Kai if he'd ever followed in his father's footsteps. He said he'd tried the long jump aged 15, managing around 5.75 metres - not bad for a child of his years, but unexceptional. "I discovered very quickly that if a son is going to do something that his father was good at, the son had better be very good indeed," Kai told me. "So I gave it up. I was fortunate. Within weeks I discovered golf, and golf consumed me like a bacillus."

He played off scratch, and I believe was still off low single figures at 70.

I recalled Long this week, as 2014 pressures intensify. Expectation will be high around the likes of Eilish McColgan (3000m steeplechase), Lynsey Sharp (800m) and Jake Wightman (1500m). They are the daughters respectively of Commonwealth gold medallists Liz McColgan and Cameron Sharp, and the son of Geoff Wightman, the former chief executive of scottishathletics who was an international marathon runner.

How tough must it be to follow such parents?

McColgan enters the Hampden arena in the event in which her Irish father, Peter, represented Great Britain at world level, and with all the attendant baggage of being the daughter of Scotland's only world athletics champion and greatest endurance runner. But the slowest of the three Kenyans selected for Glasgow was nine seconds quicker than McColgan last year, and seven of the athletes eligible to run at Hampden have run faster than her this year.

Like McColgan, Sharp won the genetic lottery. Her dad was a member of the 1978 Commonwealth gold-medal relay squad and has four other Commonwealth bronze medals as well as European 200m silver, while her mum, Carol, was a Commonwealth internationalist at 800m.

Lynsey is European 800m champion and has twice run under two minutes this year, ranking her third in the Commonwealth.

Wightman's father was sixth in the European marathon championship, and eighth in the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth marathon. His mother, Susan, was sixth behind McColgan in Edinburgh and 12th in the Seoul Olympic marathon in 1988.

Previous Scotland teams at Commonwealth Games have included Glen Stewart, son of 1970 10,000m champion Lachie, and Kirsty Maguire, daughter of Kevin and Moira Maguire. The former was an international decathlete while Mum was Commonwealth high-jump bronze medallist in 1970. Kirsty is a former national pole-vault record-holder and represented Scotland in the Commonwealths, while her sister, Lindsay, rowed in the London Olympics.

I once stood beside Glen when he was introduced at an event as: "Son of Lachie . . ."

There can have been no tougher task than to follow in such footsteps, and I asked: "Does that not get to you, constantly hearing that?"

"Not at all," said Glen. "I get a lift from it."

Carol Sharp says daughter Lynsey, a qualified lawyer, is "the kind of person that if she was not putting pressure on herself by running, she would be doing it in other areas of life, academically, or in business".

"But every time I watch her, I feel pressure," she adds. "Not because I want reflected glory, it's just that I don't want her to get hurt. When things have gone wrong, she hurts so much.

"Lynsey started running for fun. It was never the plan to turn her into a world-class athlete. I was using sport to keep our teenage daughters out of harm's way - smoking, doing drugs, getting immersed in the drinking culture. With athletics there was no room for that. They loved the sport, and the club. That's where they had fun. It was the natural thing to do."

Olympic 100m champion Allan Wells and his international hurdler wife have two athletically gifted children, Simon and Zoe. "It's difficult for kids with an Olympic champion for a father," he says, "incredibly difficult. When their pictures were in the paper with other kids, I was shocked, because they were standing behind other people. 'Why were they not showing their faces?' I wondered. There was a lot of pressure on them.

"When Zoe ran, she looked like [Cuban runner Alberto] Juantorena: tall, thin, high-knee lift. I felt very proud. I though she could have continued in the sport. But Margot, who coached her, knew how hard it was going to be. I don't think she wanted them to be in the same situation as we were - a monastic existence. Monks had a better social life than we had."

Tom McKean, whose European titles indoor and out, plus world indoor gold, capped a dazzling career, says his children Rachel and Craig have shown no real interest. "It can skip a generation and all of a sudden it comes out," he says. "Grandweans? We'll see!"

So you can take it that McColgan, Sharp and Wightman are very good indeed. The two women are good enough to medal if everything goes right. Wightman is still at the apprentice stage. He won the European junior 1500m title last year and to graduate to the Games team at 20 is a great achievement. His pedigree suggests he will go far.

It gives a child a head start to know that a parent is a champion athlete. Excelling at anything becomes less remote if one's parents (or siblings) have been high achievers. But there is no easy path to the podium.