Just as they did at the National Cross Country Championships earlier in the year Central Athletics Club coped with the absence of their world class leader to take the Scottish 5K Road Racing men’s team title last weekend.
This time Andy Buttchart was unavailable due to a rather pressing other engagement, while the performance was all the more impressive because he was not their only significant absentee and in more ways than one Cameron Milne’s performance in Denmark was even more telling in terms of the club’s success and that of Scottish athletics as a whole.
Butchart was the first non-African runner born to finish the 3000m at the Diamond League meet in Doha, just a couple of hours before his team-mates enjoyed their latest success on the national stage, with Jamie Crowe spearheading their effort at Silverknowes, Alastair Hay and Aidan Thompson, who took the under-20 silver medal, also counting.
It was the following day that Milne made his debut appearance a Scotland international vest and out-stripping expectations as he eased past his much better known compatriot Derek Hawkins - older brother of Callum and a Commonwealtth Games athlete in his own right - to claim third place in the Lillebaelt Half Marathon.
What made that all the more telling was Milne’s pre-race observation about the impact Butchart’s astonishing performances in 2016, when, without lottery funding, his string of Scottish record breaking performances saw him force his way into the British team for the Olympics in Rio where he claimed sixth place in the final.
“’There’s definitely an influence,” Milne had observed, before heading over to Denmark.
“We at the club and in the training group all know the runner he was before he put in the hard work and now we can see where that hard work has taken him.
“It gives you a signal of what might be achieved with a measure of determination and a desire to train hard and train regularly with consistency. He listened to his coach and those in the group do the same and hopefully then it all starts to rub off on us.”
While that is particularly exciting for the Stirling-based club, Scottish athletics officials believe that after years of their women leading the way, they are seeing something similar as a result of the successes achieved on the international stage by Butchart and the Hawkins brothers and, again, cite the evidence of that Scottish 5K Road Racing Championships last weekend.
While they acknowledge that at the very top end the times were quicker in the corresponding English Championships, they are pointing to the extraordinary size of the relative entry, finishing numbers and depth of quality that was on show this side of the border.
Whereas 476 runners finished the English, four more completed the Scottish event and no fewer than 318 of them produced sub-20 minute runs, compared with 244 in England, while to make the top 100 in Scotland an athlete had to be quicker than 16 mins 52 seconds, a high class performance by the standards of all but the very best in the sport.
The event meanwhile provided the latest evidence of exponential growth in Scottish athletics, driven by a focus on club development since the finishing numbers were up by more than 200 on 2014, from 271 to 480 and of the original 600 strong entry.
“This is real evidence of clubs committing to championship events and competition,” said a Scottish Athletics spokesman.
Real evidence, too, it seems, of the sporting mantra that if you can see it, you can be it.
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