JUST four days before he smashed the oldest Scottish field events record, hammer-thrower Mark Dry was ready to quit athletics.

Despite his Commonwealth bronze in Glasgow, Dry was disillusioned: by failure to improve while putting in a brutal workload; broke and struggling to access his coach; frustrated by seeing school contemporaries progressing in their lives; and by being denied access to events by suspected and sometimes proven drug cheats. So he decided he was finished.

That was on the Wednesday. On the Sunday he added 1.43 metres to the Scottish record which had stood to Chris Black since 1983.

Shouting advice behind the cage was Black, his former coach who had stepped in to help. At the far end of the arena was Dry's present coach, Tore Gustafsson, just back from California.

"I had been unable to see him since last August," explains Dry. "It's a complicated situation. Tore is based in San Jose, while I'm in Loughborough. I'm on UK funding, but it's £7000 per year. I am grateful, but it's not enough to train full-time. I was asked to go to the US, one month on, one month off. I've got a job and can't take every second month off. If I don't keep my job, I don't pay the rent.

"I qualified in sports massage in April. I work two days a week, teaching pe at a primary in Coventry. I'm doing what I can to stay afloat and train as much as I can. It's not Tore's fault that I haven't see him since then. I was just not able to go to America. None of this is a blame game. It's just an unfortunate situation. I'm not blaming Chris. I'm not blaming Tore. I'm not blaming anyone. I haven't the money to go to San Jose all the time.

"Chris stepped in to help when there was nobody there. We have a good understanding, and work well together."

How well can be judged from the fact that in five years Black took Dry from 57 metres to 74.82m. The record at Loughborough was Dry's first improvement since 2012.

"I want to thank Tore for all he has done. He did his best to help me throw far, but Chris helped me get my feeling back. I am very grateful to both, but Chris deserves a lot of credit.

"I talked to Tore on the phone, but it's not the same as seeing one another. Some events are mostly about training volume - but the hammer is very technical."

Black has studied thousands of hours of video, every major competition since 1970. "It makes it easier to spot faults, watching people do it wrong."

Black credits Rachel Hunter (nearing the Scottish women's record) for inspiring him. "She wore a glove, like a gardening glove, on the 'wrong' hand. A common flaw is to pull with the left hand, rather than pushing with the right. Wearing the glove on the wrong hand forces you to do it properly. It's a whole different feeling. So I tried that with Mark."

Salvation came not a moment too soon.

"The Wednesday before I broke the record, I quit," said Dry. "I did not want to do it any more. I'd had enough. I was not enjoying it in the slightest. I really hated it. So I handed my keys to my training partner and said that was it. I am 27, could have made money, could have been in the military. I'm getting too old to start other jobs. Do I commit to this and believe I can make it - which I always did - or do I get out?

"I put a lot on hold for this [he was the youngest person in Britain to qualify as a pilot, on his 16th birthday]. If it does not pay off, I have used up a lot of my life. I've done amazing things most people don't get to do, but I can't afford a house, don't have a mortgage, and I'm renting with three other athletes. I am still bumming around, essentially. People I went to school with have jobs, money, wives, and kids. I have a Commonwealth medal and have made a lot of friends, but sometimes you panic about where your life is going. I do believe in myself, believe I can reach the Olympics and win major championship medals. But sometimes you waver, and wonder: 'What am I doing here'?"

The suspicion that some rivals use illegal enhancement is particularly depressing.

"It's going on all over the place. People think it's a level playing field. It's not. The standard for Rio de Janeiro is 78 metres. I believe I can do that, but if you don't make 78.00 they will take the top 32 people in the rankings [to make up two groups of 16 for the Olympic competition].

"Before the end of the closing period there will be a lot of guys throwing just over 76 who have been nowhere near it. Before London 2012, in the final days of the qualifying period, guys were getting four and five-metre personal bests out of nowhere. A couple have already been caught. I'm not saying everyone is doing it. Plenty guys are better technically than me, better athletes than me, who deserve the recognition. There are no illusions. Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin - the sport is riddled with it.

"I have been in the background so long. I don't get into comps because I am a 74-metre guy that's legitimate. All these 79-metre guys get in these competitions, and then throw 69-70m. A lot are no better than me.

"I know how legitimate mine is. I know it is not a long hammer. I'm not on drugs. I know when it comes to championships they are not going to perform. So if I am in the mid-70s ballpark I know it's going to take 78-plus to medal.

"The record will open a lot of doors. My agent is trying to get me some better competitions."

Black drew on Dry's days as a pilot to suggest a way forward: "a check list - laminate it and study it. It's like listening to a cd in your car. You know what the next tune is. It's embedded."

Dry was brought up in Burghead, and both parents are pilots. "It's a good idea," he says. "I know how important it is. When you do something for so long you don't need the list, but under pressure you can forget the drill. In a competition, all you are thinking about is your rivals and throwing far, but you are maybe waiting 30 minutes between throws. The stuff you do every day goes out the window. So a sheet you look at between rounds would be very useful."

Black set his first Scottish record in 1972, so had actually held it for 43 years when Dry beat it this month. He threw a Commonwealth, UK all-comers, British, Scottish national, and native record in 1976, at Meadowbank (74.98m). Of that, only the native best now survives, as he reminded Dry in an email: "I am not quite the totally erased/dead/forgotten old fart . . . yet."

Black's biggest throw came at the Montreal Olympics, but was never measured because it was in the warm up. The Olympic record was 75.50m. Black saw the the handle hit the tape marking that record. "The handle is 1.21m and the ball is always straight in front, so it made that throw around 76.70m," he says. "That would have taken silver behind Yuriy Sedyk."

When they went into the arena, he finished seventh. "It still haunts me," he says.

Black twice won Commonwealth bronze, and after a hip replacement, came back to the sport in his 50s, winning world veteran titles and setting a world masters record for 50-plus.

He still throws very occasionally "for fun", though he suffers from lumbar stenosis and has a disabled sticker on his car. "My legs go numb and I fall down. I sit down for 10 minutes, until the feeling comes back. People don't help because they think I am drunk. I have just got to live with that."

He is "lead mechanical engineer" on the Typhoon fighter's radar and laser-warning systems. His employment, covered by the Secrets Act, involves problem-solving and has honed the mindset for finding faults in hammer technique.

He contacted a colleague at BAE Weapon Systems Artillery division, considering hammer principles similar to a ball shot from a cannon. Their senior ballistics engineer watched videos of current and former world record holders Sedyk and Sergey Litvinov, and provided Black with software, graphs, and formulae to calculate loadings. A unique tool.

"Loadings in the hammer are far greater than in any other throws event, so getting it slightly wrong can have a huge reduction in distance. And eliminating minor faults can bring big improvement. Release speeds for men's and women's hammer are the same, though they are a different weight. It's independent of weight.

"You cannot beat the laws of physics. Isaac Newton's laws of mechanics from the 1600s still apply today.

Despite the longevity of his record, Black insists: "It was still s****. So I coach what I didn't know - not what I knew - because what I knew was crap. I went seven years without improving and then by just 52 centimetres. I vowed that when I coached, nobody would get held back seven years because of my lack of knowledge.

"I video the crap people, and superimpose the good ones. Now I see the problems faster and know how to fix it. All these people are in my body. By time I discovered how, I was past it, couldn't do it myself, but now I know what to do, hopefully, these throwers in younger bodies can do what I have learned.

"I have done all the calculations for Mark. If he puts it all together now, he can throw 79 metres."