Jake Wightman said last night that he was stunned at having landed a place in Great Britain & Northern Ireland's 74-strong squad for next month's European Championships in Zurich.
The European junior champion was an unexpected choice to join his fellow Scot, the world championship finalist Chris O'Hare, in the 1500 metres, with the pair among seven Scots who are Switzerland-bound.
Jax Thoirs, the 21-year-old Scottish pole vault record holder, will also make his major championship debut, while Lynsey Sharp, the defending 800m champion, was already guaranteed a place. Laura Muir (1500m), Beth Potter (10,000m) and Eilidh Child (400m hurdles) also feature.
Wightman, who broke his personal best in last weekend's Diamond League in Glasgow, admits it will take a few days for his inclusion to sink in.
"I was shocked to get the call," the 20-year-old said. "This time last week, I'd have never expected to be going. But I had a few missed calls yesterday when I finished training and I called them back to the get the news.
"It's going to be an incredible month, with Glasgow and Zurich; I just hope it won't be too exhausting. But they're pretty different kinds of challenges and two weeks between them should be enough to recover."
O'Hare, sidelined recently with a hamstring injury, proved his fitness in finishing one place ahead of Wightman at Hampden and the long-time friends - both run for Edinburgh AC - will now get a first European crack in tandem. "Meadowbank raised us well," said Wightman, now ranked ninth in Europe. "Scottish middle-distance running's really on the up now and especially in the east. When I was growing up, the west coast was dominant so it's kind of fun we're on top now."
There was no place for the Scottish high jumper Ray Bobrownicki, who earned the qualifying mark of 2.28m on Sunday, or for the steeplechaser Eilish McColgan, despite a personal appeal based on the toughness of the standard which was unchanged from the Olympic Games.
"We have talked with Eilish about that before," revealed Neil Black, the UK Athletics performance director. "We all understand that Eilish has lots of talent and potential. She's had problems with minor illness which have interfered a bit. She's making progress, but she hasn't made the standard so far. We talked about it but, applying consistent criteria, we just didn't feel it was appropriate to open a window for Eilish to have another opportunity for selection."
James Dasaolu, as expected, has been given the third berth in the 100m with the emerging star Chijindu Ujah - he is the only Briton to run under 10 seconds this year - restricted to the 4x100m relay place.
Mo Farah has been granted the chance to defend his European titles over 5000 and 10,000 metres and Black is still confident the Olympic gold medallist will recover from illness in time for the Commonwealth Games.
"That's the plan and there's no reason at this stage to think otherwise," Black added. "He's now phasing back into full training. He's really positive about things and thinking optimistically about the summer."
The world champions Christine Ohuruogu and Dai Greene have also been included, subject to gaining the required standards by the August 3 deadline.
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