Growing strength in depth, allied to growing interest in domestic athletics suggest there could be an opportunity for Scotland to stage an innovative ‘City Games’ style athletics meet and Guy Learmonth would love to have that opportunity
“Let’s go for it, I’m all for it. Put me down for that,” he said. “We could easily have one in Scotland. You could have all the Scottish stars and you could even have it as an international match, a Scotland v England v Ireland, whatever.
“These different meets are incredible. It’s something different. Just watching Diamond Leagues and stuff can be boring, let’s be honest, but this is exciting and it gets people interested and anything that raises the profile of the sport and the athletes, more of it needs to be done. If it keeps going the way it’s going hopefully we can expand it into Scotland.”
Obvious match ups would include the all Edinburgh AC trio of Chris O’Hare, Jake Wightman and Josh Kerr who formed the entire British 1500m team at the recent World Championships, Laura Muir, Eilish McColgan, Lynsey Sharp, Steph Twell and Beth Potter battling it out over a variety of middle distances or Andrew Butchart and Callum Hawkins taking their cross country rivalry onto the road.
“It’s incredible what’s going on in Scotland,” Learmonth continued. “Everyone is just slowly raising their game. We look at the amount of Scots we had in the World Champs and it’s grown and grown and grown and I genuinely believe in the next few years there will be more Scottish athletes as part of Team GB bringing home a lot of medals, not just making finals and getting into teams, there’s a lot of potential.”
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