For decades, successive generations of athletes have been obliged to reinvent the wheel, often making the same mistakes as their predecessors.

For decades, successive generations of athletes have been obliged to reinvent the wheel, often making the same mistakes as their predecessors. But no longer. Liz McColgan and Paula Radcliffe, who teamed up yesterday to give Scottish athletes the benefit of their experience, are just part of a programme being rolled out all over Britain by various agencies.

McColgan, the former world and Commonwealth 10,000m champion, fronts the scottishathletics Bank of Scotland Endurance Squad, and Radcliffe, the world marathon record holder, joined her yesterday at the Scottish Institute of Sport in Stirling to provide practical advice for 50 athletes and 11 coaches.

Today at Loughborough, recently retired Jason Gardener and Ashia Hansen will be unveiled as UK Athletics' latest Norwich Union performance advisors. Gardener, the former world indoor 60m champion and Olympic relay gold medallist, and Hansen, former world indoor triple jump record holder, join Steve Backley, Wendy Sly and Kath Merry, who are already in place.

However, with the bank's help, Scotland is ahead of the World Class Talent Induction programme in England. McColgan's endurance squad has been operating for three years. "There was nothing like this when I was first making my way in the sport," said McColgan, while Radcliffe, who yesterday paid tribute to the help which McColgan gave her, was already world junior champion before Dave Moorcroft was formally enlisted to help her.

They are determined that the future will be different. McColgan pointed out that a lot of the kids whom she coaches, at 16 or 17, would never have seen her run. "Paula's current . . . up with the Lewis Hamiltons, the really, really good world-class sportsmen and women. The point of her coming here is that even if she just lights the fire of one person . . . That's what it's all about.

"It's about what a normal person she is. She's not any different from them, it's just hard work and dedication."

Radcliffe says it's important to give back to the sport. "I feel very lucky in what athletics has brought to me in my life," she says, "not personally just in terms of success, but as a person: finding confidence, making friends, the social side of it, learning more about yourself, learning to work as a team. I'm quite passionate about introducing that to other people."

Perhaps as important as anything for aspiring athletes is to realise neither McColgan nor Radcliffe were the best of their era as youngsters. McColgan says frankly that she got there through hard work. "Obviously, I had an aptitude to be an endurance runner, but I didn't have star quality. If anybody had seen me when I was 13 or 14, they wouldn't have said: Oh, look at her run'.

"I got there through a lot of hard work and the belief I could do better. It would have made a big difference to have the help now available.

"I was so keen, but there was no information. My training was trial and error. My coach died when I was 17, so I was pretty much self-coached all through my career . . . It has made me a better person in terms of my knowledge of the sport. I've trialed everything, I've made the errors, and I've educated myself along the way."

It was a tough path for McColgan to escape from her council home in Dundee. It was only because Harry Bennett, her late coach at Dundee Hawkhill, bought her ticket that McColgan went to junior college in America. "I never wanted to go to the USA. I was forced to go," she said. "It wasn't a decision that I made. I was frogmarched down to London and put on a plane. I had no choice in the matter. If it had been up to me I'd have said no, and I would never have went. And I would never have gone on with my running. Harry knew that if I had stayed, working in a jute mill, I'd never ever be able to go on and run.

"Back then we never knew you could make a living out of athletics the way I ended up, with the contracts I got and the things I achieved. You never dreamed that could happen in those days. But I didn't question it because I wanted it. All I wanted to do is be the best runner ever."

Creating that desire in her proteges may be the toughest task she faces now.