IS it just me, or has sport in this country taken an upturn?

It's easy, of course, to interpret evidence to suit one's hopes or beliefs; religions have done this for centuries. However, in the sporting arena, our star may, indeed, be on the ascendant.

There's always a risk that, in one's desire to see sport contribute to making the world a better place (in terms of legacy: health, education, social inclusion etc, all the raft of benefits we routinely hear) and to see Scotland's status improve on the world stage, we may read more into the facts than we should.

The evidence is not always unequivocal and must be weighed. In an increasingly performance-judged society, especially a sporting one where funding depends on results, national agencies and sport governing bodies hire spin doctors to spread the gospel according to their own particular agenda.

Yet even cynical analysts must acknowledge some encouraging statistics. Seven swimmers, headed by the Olympic silver medallist Michael Jamieson, were named this week in a 27-strong GB team for the world championships in Barcelona later this month. There were six Scots in last year's Olympic team, one of whom has now retired and three of whom are absent from the team announced for Barcelona.

Yet qualifying standards for Spain are even higher than they were for London 2012. For example, Jamieson needed to meet a 200 metres breast-stroke standard of 2min. 11.74 sec. for the Olympics. The time he needed for Barcelona, which opens a week on Sunday, is 2:11.67. For Glasgow 2014, it's more modest – 2:14.09 – yet that's still more than a second faster than the world record David Wilkie set to win Olympic gold in 1976. Jamieson is fastest in the world this year at 200m breaststroke, yet only second in Britain at 100m, a measure of how strong domestic competition is.