Eilidh Child declared 2013 was a season beyond her wildest dreams after being named as Scotland's Athlete of the Year, but the 26-year-old believes her best is yet to come,
Eilidh Child declared 2013 was a season beyond her wildest dreams after being named as Scotland's Athlete of the Year, but the 26-year-old believes her best is yet to come,
The hurdles specialist took the honour for the second time at the sport's annual awards, bringing down the curtain on a year in which she won her first major championship medal with a bronze in the 4x400m relay at the World Championships as well as taking individual silver at the European Indoors.
Child claimed the Kukri-sponsored prize from a shortlist that also included double IPC world medallist Libby Clegg and European Under-23 medallist Laura Muir.
"If you'd said to me at the start of the year that I'd get a gold and a silver from the European Indoors, fifth at the world championships in the hurdles and a bronze from the relay, I'd have taken it," said Child. "But as the season went on, my goals started to change.
"In the indoor season, I surprised myself. I knew I had the flat speed, I just had to get my hurdling right. I got that right more times than I got it wrong, but there's still more I can do. Hopefully, next year, I can nail it all the time and build on it."
Clegg had the consolation of being named as Para Athlete of the Year. But the blind sprinter has set herself the goal of lowering her 100 metres mark.
"There's still progress to be made," she said. "It's hard to get personal bests year after year, but I'm desperate to under 12 seconds."
European junior 1500m champion Jake Wightman and discus silver medalist Nick Percy shared the Under-20 Athlete of the Year award. Edinburgh AC hurdles prospect Katie Purves won the Under-18 prize with ultra-specialist Sharon Law accepting the Masters honour.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article