Scottish athletes have enjoyed a remarkable year. But what did it look like from afar? Actually, not too far – Wigan to be precise.

Jenny Meadows is a medal winner at world and European level over 800m, and in 2017 spent the year acting as a pace setter in Diamond League meetings across the globe. But she says that on the track, Scots have been the real pace setters.

“We are casting an envious look north,” admitted Meadows. “If you look at the British Championships, the top three guys in the 1500m were all Scots – Chris O’Hare, Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman – and pushed Charlie Grice, a runner who made Olympic and World finals, out of the British team for London. You would never have thought that possible but it shows an amazing strength in depth.

“When you have that competitiveness, one plays off the other. You have people running to be the best in Scotland, which pulls them to being the best in Britain. It’s a fantastic place to be.”

She added: “When you just have 20 places available for the Commonwealth Games, you could have someone who one minute looks sure to be going, suddenly being overtaken by maybe one or two of their team mates.

“If there are 25 world-class athletes fighting for twenty places, that is a real dog-eat-dog environment.

“It’s not nice if you are one of those missing out, but, it means you are taking the very best athletes to major championships.

“I’ve paced Eilish McColgan several times in the last year, and she had had an amazing season. Like Laura Muir, you get recognised for winning medals. But it registered with the public and viewers when Eilish posts times comparable with her mum – and we all remember what an amazing athlete Liz was – and when Laura is compared to the times Kelly Holmes once did.

“Times are always a great benchmark and people get that level of performance. And those fifth and sixth positions they’ve been getting in major finals, they will transition in to medals very soon, I’m sure.

“Just look at Zoey Clark. Only 21 and a World Championship medallist. Scottish athletics, all the way through, has been a great success story.”

Meadows was one of the star guests in Glasgow on Saturday, and even proved quite a dancing talent as well at the post-presentation ceilidh.

But good as she was, the night belonged to the athletes rewarded for their fantastic efforts on the track.

“In most of the categories, it was really tough to pick a winner,” Meadows agreed. “To shortlist the Athlete of the Year award down to five nominees was a performance in itself, simply because there were so many who could have been included. But that is a measure of where athletics is in Scotland right now.

“Callum [Hawkins] was a deserving winner. But you wouldn’t have had anyone arguing if it had been Sammi, or Eilish, or Laura or Chris.”

She adds; “Everything within Scottish athletics has come to fruition at the same time. You also have to believe people when they say this isn’t a flash in the pan. The infrastructure, the drive, the commitment, the vision, is there and will be for years to come, because future generations will be out to emulate and beat what and who has gone before.”