Scotland's badminton players have earned tributes from their top official after another historic campaign which saw them reach the knockout stages of the European Team Championships for the first time this week.
Having beaten defending champions Germany in the pool stages on the way to the quarter-finals their title bid ended yesterday, but Anne Smillie, chief executive of Badminton Scotland, praised them for the consistency of their efforts in the national cause.
"The Scottish Badminton team has had a fantastic spell and Thursday's win over Germany, the current European Champions, shows we are a force to be reckoned with," she said.
"It is naturally disappointing that we could not go one step further with a win over Russia today, especially as we had beaten them at the last World Team Championships, but our record over the past year speaks for itself. We have won eleven matches and lost only two and very few sports can match that."
That run includes winning the second tier competition at the Sudirman Cup - those World Team Championships - in 2013 and claiming two medals at last year's Commonwealth Games, double their target, before they claimed their place in this week's event by coming through November's qualifying tournament in Prague, beating their Czech hosts in doing so.
They received an unexpected boost at these finals when the Spanish team which includes women's singles world champion Carolina Marin, withdrew at the last minute due to a political row between their players and federation, guaranteeing the Scots a quarter-final spot without playing a match, but they then demonstrated their full entitlement to it.
Kirsty Gilmour set the tone for the defeat of the Germans by gaining revenge for last year's surprise world championship first round exit to Karin Shnaase with a convincing 21-15, 21-15 win, however the outstanding performance came from Kieran Merrilees in the men's singles who put in a stunning performance to out-last an opponent ranked 72 places above him in a gruelling hour-long battle.
His victory over Dieter Domke was all the more remarkable because, having led 17-12 in the deciding game he then suffered the potentially demoralising experience of losing eight points in a row to confront three match points, only to save them all then win the next two to take the match 22-20.
That provided Imogen Bankier and Robert Blair the chance to demonstrate their mettle under pressure which they duly did with a 12-21,21-12, 21-18 win over Michael Fuchs and Birgit Michels.
In yesterday's quarter-final the team was in trouble when Bankier and Blair, in what may have been their last competitive appearance together, lost the opener and Merrilees could not repeat the heroics of the previous day either. Consequently, while Gilmour was once again in imposing form, thrashing Ksenia Polikarpova, it was all over when Blair and Paul van Rievelde - in spite of bravely earning a game point in the opener against world no.14 ranked pair Vladimir Ivanov and Ivan Sozonov - went down 22-20, 21-16.
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