The 100 Greatest Scottish Sporting Icons day 10: The top 10 countdown begins

The 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh was a long way from being a great success either commercially or competitively. Only two other gold medals were won by the home team - Billy Gilliland and Dan Travers taking the men’s doubles title in the badminton hall and Grant Knox and George Adrain winning the men’s pairs’ title on the bowling green. The then Liz Lynch was the only Scot to claim victory on her own and the only female winner in navy blue.

The beneficiary of a US athletics scholarship who was beginning to gain wider recognition, that commanding 10,000m victory, by a 12-second margin over the rest of the field, offered the first real indication of her potential as an international competitor.

During the next decade she fully realised it, proving herself a nuggety, all-terrain performer as silver and bronze medals were collected at World Cross Country Championships, a silver medal was acquired at the World Indoor Championship and, as well as victories in the New York, Tokyo and London marathons, a World Half Marathon Championships was won on the road.

There was also the matter of an Olympic silver medal in Seoul in 1988, but her greatest achievement came elsewhere in Asia three years later at the World Championships.

McColgan had given birth to daughter Eilish just seven months before that gathering in Tokyo, but had shown her determination to remain competitive when, in March 1991, she managed the second of those podium finishes at the World Cross Country Championships, apparently taking no more than a few days off around Eilish’s birth.

Even so her performance was astonishing and rightly hailed by athletics grandee Brendan Foster as “the greatest performance by a British distance runner”, as she ran away from a world-class field, winning by 21 seconds. That her rivals included silver and bronze medallists from China at the height of concerns over how its athletes were preparing – eliciting wondrous claims that they were benefiting from the ingestion of caterpillar fungus and turtle blood among other things – in a race run in humid conditions that should have favoured the Asian competitors over Northern Europeans, only accentuated the achievement.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

At a family gathering a few years ago a gentleman by the name of Phil Kearns, a distant relative who is a lifelong runner, introduced himself and told me how he remembered first identifying the talent of a young girl from the notorious Whitfield housing scheme when she was his pupil at St Saviour’s High School. Liz Lynch, as she was then, has since recounted his influence.

“My very first run was because of our PE teacher who was a mad marathon runner,” she said. “In the winter he just used to say, ‘Right, out you go. You run round that field.’ I’d always be either first or second… This teacher noticed that some of us were good so he sent us up to the local Harriers and I loved it.

“I didn’t really have a lot of friends at the school because they were more into boys and partying and super lager type things at the weekends. I just wasn’t into that. So my whole socialising ended up being at the running club.”

Once at Hawkhill Harriers, the club that has had a major part in the careers of both Laura Muir – who recently broke McColgan’s 25-year-old Scottish indoor 5000 metres record – and Liz’s own daughter Eilish, she came under the tutelage of Harry Bennett, whom she has described as a guru-like, inspirational figure who convinced a 15-year-old girl that she was capable of Olympic glory.

Bennett, whose financial support allowed her to take up her athletics scholarship, died when she was 17 so sadly did not see her fulfil her destiny. It was also Bennett who told her otherwise when, in Dundee’s ‘Three Js’ era of an economy revolving around jute, jam and journalism, she was put into a Youth Training Scheme job in the horribly unhealthy environment of a jute mill and advised to stick at it on the basis that she would never make a living out of running.

His role in her development should never be forgotten, then, but nor should that of the “mad marathon runner” who showed his passion for sport and his pupils’ well-being in giving not only a young Liz Lynch but also some of her schoolmates life-changing opportunities.

As we contemplate the relationship between sport and wider health issues, it seems reasonable to wonder how many who are now working in comprehensive state schools in the most run-down areas are finding the motivation to prove similarly inspirational.

I first encountered Liz when, as a young reporter at the height of the first marathon boom in the early eighties, I was sent to cover the opening of a running shop in the Lochee area of Dundee and, as the city’s up and coming prospect, she was the guest of honour. The recollection, strangely, is of speaking to a rather shy girl, but she was very young at the time.

Thereafter, heading into and out of our offices in the city’s Kingsway, we would often spot her running solo, pounding out the miles. I remember, too, her parents were always extremely welcoming when we would visit them to get a reaction following her major successes. There was consequently always a real sense of pride in watching her work, not least because something about the way she trained and the way she competed spoke to the defiance of a city that was in desperate decline at the time and is only now beginning to establish a new identity for itself.

9

Matt Busby

It seems reasonable to say that Manchester United, as we now know it, did not exist when the 18-year-old Matt Busby headed across the Border to join the much longer established Manchester City in 1928. In fairness neither club was very successful at the time, but he played a part in changing that for City as they reached three successive FA Cup semi-finals, winning the tournament at the third time of asking in 1934.

United had made an unsuccessful bid to sign him early in his career but, after he lost his regular slot at right-half, it was to their even bigger rivals of years to come, Liverpool, that he moved in 1936, just before City claimed their first ever  English title.

Many great managerial success stories have been fuelled by unfulfilled playing ambitions and Busby’s determination to be master of his own destiny was demonstrated when, having been a highly respected club captain, he turned down a job as assistant manager at Liverpool because he felt the board had too much involvement in player and team selection.

Manchester United had kept an eye on him since making that offer many years earlier and when, as the Second World War was ending and they consented to giving him the control he felt was essential, his destiny was fulfilled.

Over the next quarter of a century he first built the “Busby Babes” a team that would bring both romance and tragedy on Shakespearean levels to the sport as the club’s 37-year wait for a major trophy was ended with their FA Cup win in 1948 before, after a string of runners-up finishes, they won the first of their three First Division titles in the fifties.

The third of those was to prove fateful - Busby paying a cruel price for his brave resistance of the Football League’s objections to his decision that, in light of Chelsea having turned down the opportunity in its inaugural year, Manchester United would take theirs to compete with the Continent’s finest clubs in the European Cup.

The Munich air disaster might well have defined his career, not least because he was close to joining those who died. Busby would spend two months in hospital, eventually returning home by land, understandably, in time to see a makeshift Manchester United team beaten in the FA Cup final that they had miraculously reached under the caretaker stewardship of his great ally Jimmy Murphy and he seriously considered quitting, partly blaming himself for what had happened.

Behind every great man is a great woman, they say and Busby’s wife Jean is said to have played a significant part in that process, telling him that his players would have wanted him to carry on. Those who persuaded him to resume his duties deserve to be remembered with as much affection as the man whose statue welcomes visitors to Old Trafford.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Amid all the silverware in the trophy room at Old Trafford, the centre-piece should perhaps be an Arthurian-style round table such is the array of knights of the realm and footballing royalty associated with the club.

While his great successor, fellow Scot and fellow knight Alex Ferguson won many more trophies during a comparable period in office, it was Busby who transformed the club, bringing it a status that would allow it to entice the great and the good of the sport.

In stark contrast to the events of the previous year and at a time before leading British clubs imported players from overseas, Busby could field arguably the finest English, Scottish and Irish players of their day in Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best, when his Manchester United side became the first English club to win the European Cup in 1968.

In many ways, too, he set the template for a generation of strong-willed Scottish managers whose characters had been formed in mining towns, dictating the terms on which he was prepared to run his club in similar fashion to the way that Jock Stein would at Celtic some 20 years later.

Liverpool subsequently made up for their error in failing to offer Busby what he required to join their management team, when they eventually recruited his fellow Scot Bill Shankly 14 years later and the great rivalry between the clubs intensified during the sixties when they claimed the English title twice apiece.

However, Busby’s achievements must always be seen in the context of the events of February 6, 1958 when the “Busby Babes” were cut down in their prime, with Duncan Edwards – still considered in some quarters to have been England’s greatest ever player – among the eight players and 23 in all who lost their lives on that fateful night in West Germany.

That they became champions of Europe little more than a decade later and did so playing with such panache, is what sets their history apart
from all other clubs and the Phoenix-like recovery was all masterminded by a man who himself barely survived.

8

Ken Buchanan

Only four British boxers are listed among those who have officially been considered undisputed world champions. Most recently, Lennox Lewis simultaneously held the WBA, WBC and IBF heavyweight titles, in 1987 Lloyd Honeyghan held those three titles at welterweight and in 1980, before the IBF title existed, Alan Minter was both WBA and WBC middleweight champion in 1980. The first of them, however, was a lightweight who is generally considered the finest Scottish and, perhaps, British boxer of all time.

Soon after winning the ABA featherweight title in 1965, Ken Buchanan turned professional. After compiling a 23-bout unbeaten record, he earned a shot at the British lightweight title in 1968 and duly took it after defending champion Maurice Cullen was counted out in the 11th round.

Credentials established, he worked his way steadily towards bigger prizes and, following a solitary setback, when he lost to Spain’s defending champion Miguel Velazquez in his first assault on a European title in 1970, he beat him in the re-match on his way to a WBA world title clash with Panamanian Ismael Laguna.

Winning that title with the odds stacked against him, fighting in Puerto Rico and having to depend on the judges after the full 15 rounds had been completed, should have won him huge admiration at home.

Instead, because the British Boxing Board of Control was engaged in a dispute with the WBA, the result was that he was prevented from defending his title in the UK.

When, however, the WBC sanctioned his meeting with American Ruben Navarro as a title fight, the man in the eye-catching tartan shorts had his chance to unify the titles and, in spite of finding himself on the floor after just 16 seconds, he recovered from that shock to claim another odds-defying victory, gaining a unanimous points decision in his opponent’s home city of Los Angeles. That finally meant a title fight on home soil, albeit in London because no suitable venue was made available in Scotland, and he duly ended the career of former light-welterweight world champion Carlos Hernandez with a technical knockout in the 10th round.

Boxing politics once again interfered with Buchanan’s career when, after a couple of wins in non-title bouts, he was stripped of the WBC crown later in 1971 for failing to defend it against Pedro Carrasco, but he remained WBA world champion until the following year when, two days short of his 28th birthday, he met the then 21-year-old Roberto Duran.

It was a fight which ended controversially, a low blow from Duran at the end of the 13th round concluding matters when the referee made the decision that Buchanan could not continue, but the Panamanian was also reckoned to have been well ahead on every card, Buchanan for once having failed to box clever in getting dragged into the sort of fight that suited one of the sport’s great brawlers.

He battled on for a number of years and, while he was never quite the same fighter, there would be further successes, memorably on the night in Glasgow in 1973 that he regained the British title over 15 rounds of an all-Scottish encounter with future world champion Jim Watt. The occasion was all the more special because it was one of only four outings in Scotland for Buchanan during a 69-fight career.

Like so many boxers, Buchanan has had a troubled life, but in the ring he was one of his sport’s great stylists, as well as a formidable fighter.

Kevin Ferrie’s reflections

Jim Watt once observed that Ken Buchanan did not receive the adulation he deserved in his homeland because his greatest successes were achieved overseas, largely as a result of the politics that so frequently blight the careers of great boxers. That is probably true, but in terms of global recognition it is a different matter.

There are, after all, relatively few boxers who, at any stage in their careers, can claim that Muhammad Ali fought on their undercard when they topped the bill, but Buchanan was one of them.

Nor was that before Ali was an established star, if there was ever a time when that was the case. However, this was when Ali was on his way back after his four-year absence from the sport due to his controversial protest against the Vietnam war, whereas Buchanan was the champion and, if he did not get the recognition he deserved in Scotland, he was a huge draw in the USA.

That fight took place at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden, which Buchanan would grace no fewer than five times in the course of his career, sharing the stage on a second occasion with Ali, the night “The Greatest” fought another all-time great, Floyd Patterson. To have been held in such esteem in what is generally considered to have been the golden age of boxing is the measure of the ability and style of the man in the tartan shorts.

Perhaps the greatest compliments of all came from those who took his world titles from him. In the ring Buchanan looked much the smarter boxer, but he acknowledged that it was Duran, or at least his management, who proved the more astute outside of it. Realising that the Scot would not make the mistake of going toe to toe with their man a second time and would pose a far greater danger if he used his reach, agility and skill to out-box him, they never permitted a re-match.

Asked in later years by that greatest of boxing writer Hugh McIlvanney which opponent he considered to have been his toughest, Duran – who among many others in the course of one of the great careers during which he claimed world titles at four different weights, met Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas “Hitman” Hearns and “Marvellous” Marvin Hagler – simply growled one word: “Buchanan.”

7

Jackie Stewart

There was a void to be filled after the tragic death of former world champion Jim Clark, both on the Formula One grid, and within Scottish motorsport. Neither had to wait long for the next superstar to arrive.

Stewart, son of a Dumbarton garage owner, had earlier excelled as a clay pigeon shooter, winning numerous competitions – including the “Coupe de Nations” European championship – but missed out on Olympic selection for Rome in 1960.

Having started out racing sports cars, before moving on to single-seaters – with parallels similar to Clark’s relationship at Lotus with Colin Chapman (who would offer Stewart a crack at F1), and after stints with other teams and manufacturers, including BRM with whom he took a first Grand Prix win in 1965 – Stewart would eventually form a highly successful relationship with Ken Tyrrell.

While he continued to race saloons, sports cars and even had a season in the North American Can-Am series, including taking a first ever win for Carl Haas, it was in F1 that Stewart would excel. Having landed his first world title for Matra in 1969, Stewart drove for Tyrrell from 1970, firstly in a March, then in 1971 at the wheel of the famous Tyrrell 003, taking six race wins to land a second world title.

The runner-up in 1972, Stewart was again the dominant force in ’73, taking the 006 to a debut win in South Africa, then winning the Belgium, Monaco, Dutch and German races to leave him world champion ahead of what would have been his 100th GP race, the United States Grand Prix.

Stewart didn’t race, withdrawing having suffered yet another tragedy, this time when his team-mate, the brilliant young Frenchman Francois Cevert, was killed in practice.

Stewart was F1’s most successful driver with 27 race wins until Alain Prost surpassed that total in 1987, and remained Britain’s most successful race winner until Nigel Mansell won the 1992 British Grand Prix.

Stewart Weir’s reflections

Jackie Stewart was a brilliant driver, a fighter. However, it was the battles he had outside of the car that could be considered his biggest triumphs in life.

Stewart was labelled “thick” at school due to his inability to learn. However, it wasn’t until 1980, and in his 40s, that he was eventually diagnosed as suffering from dyslexia.

He has also been a long-term champion for driver safety, fuelled by his experience during the 1966 Belgian GP when he was left trapped upside down in his petrol-filled car before being rescued by Graham Hill (who quipped the car looked “a bit second-hand”). Stewart demanded fundamental changes, such as harnesses, fire-proof overalls and crash barriers. His demands were met with refusals and hostility from race organisers, teams and even drivers, before change was implemented.

“Imagine an 11-year window of time when you lose 57 – repeat 57 – friends and colleagues, often watching them die in horrific circumstances doing exactly what you do, weekend after weekend,” said Stewart, who, when heading off to race, would often take a last look at his Swiss home and wonder if he’d ever see it again.

He was also an astute businessman (he put it down to being a canny Scot). During his career Stewart was already ahead of the game in terms of his own branded goods, like sun glasses and those famous skipped hats, but also developed long-term relationships – in particular within TV, as well as with the likes of Ford and Goodyear – that would see him equally successful in retirement.

He would also become a team owner, with Stewart Grand Prix (eventually sold to Ford), his cars distinctively bedecked in his own tartan. Three-time world champion Stewart was knighted in 2001 – a year after four-time runner up, Stirling Moss.