I can’t remember a time when Scottish sport, across the board, was in a better state.
Team Scotland travels to Gold Coast, where the 2018 Commonwealth Games begin on Wednesday, with ambitions of returning home as Scotland’s most successful overseas Commonwealth Games team ever.
The team’s target is to surpass the 29 medals, eleven of which were gold, won by Team Scotland at Melbourne 2006. Considering that 53 medals, including 19 gold, were won at Glasgow 2014, eclipsing the Melbourne total seems, if anything, a somewhat modest goal. And this alone says much about the progress of Scottish sport in the past two decades since returning home from Kuala Lumpur with just twelve medals in 1998.
Lottery money has much to do with this improvement – without the investment that has allowed athletes in minority sports to go full-time, this progress would probably not have happened at all and certainly would not have happened so quickly.
But there is another, less measurable change that has taken place within Scottish sport over the past decade or so; there is now a widespread belief from Scottish athletes that they can compete – and beat – the rest of the world.
The example of Scottish Athletics typifies this perfectly; at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Scottish track and field athletes won just two medals – silver from Lee McConnell and bronze from Jamie Quarry. Compare this to the medal-winning potential of the Scottish athletics team headed to Gold Coast and the difference is colossal.
Of the 22-strong athletics team that will represent Scotland in Gold Coast, all have the prospect of a medal. This is quite a feat considering some of the strongest athletics nations in the world including Jamaica, Kenya, Australia and England are in the Commonwealth.
At Glasgow 2014, there were a few stand-out Scottish track and field athletes like Lynsey Sharp, who won a spectacular 800m silver, Eilidh Doyle, who was one of the faces of the Games and also won silver, and Libby Clegg, who won the sole track and field gold for Scotland.
Fast-forward four years though and it is hard to pick out fewer than a dozen athletes whose events will be appointment viewing. And there is similar strength-in-depth within the swimming team and the cycling team.
There is, of course, a level of talent within all of these athletes that has enabled them to become world-class but there is a common theme whenever anyone within these sports is interviewed; as the collective level of Scottish success increases, each individual’s self-belief rises. There is unquestionably a feeling from each athlete that if the guy or girl they grew up training alongside can hit these heights, then why can’t they?
This feeling could be invaluable in Gold Coast. I’ve experienced first-hand just how powerful momentum can be within a team; I was a part of Team Scotland at Melbourne 2006 where we set the overseas medal record and the growth in confidence as Scotland started racking up medal after medal was remarkable.
In Melbourne, the swimmers kicked everything off with golds on the first night and in the end, Scotland won a remarkable twelve medals in the pool, six of which were gold, and their success most definitely had a positive and significant impact on the rest of the Scotland team through those Games in 2006.
There’s something about seeing your teammates return to the Athletes Village with medals day after day that engenders a confidence that you can do it too. And while other people’s achievements shouldn’t impact upon an individual’s performance one way or another, there is a feeling that you don’t want to be the one missing out on the celebrations and the joy that comes with contributing to the team’s medal count.
Over the next fortnight, we will see if Scotland’s athletes live up to the weighty expectations that are upon their shoulders in Gold Coast. But whatever the final medal count, there can be little doubt that the health of elite sport in Scotland is the best it’s ever been.
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