THOUSANDS of athletes, exhibiting varying degrees of professionalism, will take to the streets of Glasgow today for the Great Scottish Run. It is one of Sammi Kinghorn’s privileges to be among the first of them. The elite wheelchair race gets under way at exactly 9.38am this morning and in all likelihood only a handful of her male counterparts will have completed the 10k course before the Borders Paralympic star, now resident in the city, is safely back at the finish line at Glasgow Green.
“I’ve done this race four times,” said Kinghorn, the double world champion who is also reigning champion in the women’s wheelchair event. “Thankfully, it’s not as far as the marathon I did at the Gold Coast this year but it is very hilly, so it is really hard especially for wheelchair racers to get up that first hill at the start [St Vincent Street]. We go off first, I think there are something like ten wheelchair racers. So I will watch some of the boys fly up that hill, but I think there are one or two I can beat – if I can get up that hill, because they are heavier than me when it comes to the downhill. Other than that, I am racing the clock really.”
The headline names in the men’s half marathon are last year’s winner Chris Thompson of England, his countryman Andy Vernon and Mike Shelley, the Aussie winner of Aprils’ controversial Commonwealth Games marathon. The Scottish challenge falls to the improving Luke Traynor and Rio Olympian Tsegai Tewalde.
In the women’s race, Susan Partridge, Fionnula Ross and Gemma Steel will form the home challenge hoping to keep pace with world class Africans Rose Chelimo and Mare Dibaba.
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