THE captain’s role for the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team at events like this weekend’s European Athletics Championships usually goes to a safe pair of hands. This time it has gone to a 26-year-old Borderer with a broken hand. Guy Learmonth freely admits that he can be categorised as something of a captain calamity.

Part of the skipper’s role – previously filled by the likes of Eilidh Doyle and Richard Kilty – is to pass on advice on the eve of the event with a speech at the team meeting. Perhaps Learmonth’s yesterday commenced with the dangers of taking out your frustrations by punching the track.

The Scot, after all, will compete in the 800m this weekend with a splint and strapping on his right hand after fracturing his fourth metacarpal and his knuckle doing precisely that after a crash saw his hopes of breaking Tom McKean’s indoor British record at Birmingham a fortnight ago.

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The kind of issue which even now, ten days on, can cause severe pain when just absent-mindedly hitting it off a car door, it is known as a “boxer’s fracture”. But Learmonth is determined that it won’t stop him fighting his way out of a corner if he gets boxed in on the four laps of the Emirates Arena track which await this weekend.

“I was up here at the Emirates on Sunday night and did an amazing session that had my coach jumping for joy,” said Learmonth. “Then I was taking my jacket off and clattered my hand against the car door, which was painful.

“But, this weekend, the 800 is physical, especially indoors,” added the Borderer, whose good pal Stuart Hogg – currently out of the remainder of the Six Nations with a hip problem – also has had his fair share of scrapes recently. “If somebody needs to get a push and shove, it will happen. The adrenaline will take over. It’s self-inflicted, my own fault, isn’t it?”

Not the most obvious of captain material then but Learmonth was the popular choice of his 48 GB and NI team-mates in a secret ballot to land the role and there might be method in the madness. With the Scot still outwith the World Class Performance funding programme – at times over the past 18 months he has been training on stretches of disused Borders road – he has certainly had his adversity to overcome just to get this far. But then again, Learmonth knows that getting over hurdles is something every single member of this team has had to achieve.

“Everyone had been asking me about the speech, making me nervous,” said Learmonth. “But I knew what I wanted to say. I was going to speak from the heart, not writing anything down. I’m not the sort of person who would read it from a sheet of paper. I wanted to be humble, be passionate, share bits and bobs of my story – and hopefully inspire.

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“My life is a bit crazy and I do make it crazy for myself sometimes,” he added. “So I wanted to share some stories of adversity, so that maybe the guys and girls could relate to it. Neil Black said I was allowed to be myself, which he probably regrets!

“It just wouldn’t be me without drama - I’m just a calamity kid, I suppose. There is always something going on, most of it self-inflicted. When I opened the season in Boston and ran 1.46, I thought: ‘Right, this is it. Here we go.” I’d had ten weeks in Lisbon, with everything going amazing. I came straight off the plane in Boston and ran that time.

“I was ready to go. But the trials were a mess. And then I break my hand a week after. It just shows there are always obstacles and always hurdles in the way.

“But I don’t think it is a smooth journey for anyone. I think a lot of people look at athletes and stars on the TV and think they have had a nice smooth ride. But even superstars and World and Olympic champions ... you look at them and see the adversity they have gone through. Everyone in this team has had to overcome personal adversity and hurdles. There aren’t a lot of people who do what elite athletes and other superstars so, because it is so hard. The ones who make it are the ones who stick at it.”

No-one in this team could have put it better. Learmonth hasn’t had much practice in public speaking but he has never been afraid of speaking his mind. He might have fallen short thus far of breaking McKean’s British indoor 800m record, but he isn’t exactly talking down his chances of following his idol onto the rostrum as European champion on home soil. Perhaps the highlight of the 1990 version of this event at the Kelvin Hall was McKean taking 800m gold in a race his coach Tommy Boyle said was the ‘most physical he had ever seen’.

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“I quit rugby when I was 17, 18, so I feel like I took up athletics quite late compared to the guys I was racing against,” said Learmonth. “It was my mindset, I just wanted to be the best at something. So I chose the 800m, and I saw the records in Scotland and thought I want to run faster than him or run faster than him. Indoors, I’ve already got the junior record, I’ve got the Under-23 record and now there is Tom at the top – one of the quickest guys in the UK ever, a guy who has done everything. Even from a young age I was saying I want to get that. I am not scared to put my neck on the chopping board and say I am going to do it. Because the more I say things, the more I think I can do them.”

Learmonth, one of a handful of men in the 800m field with a time under 1.46, will run this weekend with both a broken hand and a chip on his shoulder. “A lot of people, when I have fallen short, have had digs at me,” adds Learmonth. “They say I shouldn’t have said this or shouldn’t have said that. Even my dad, he tells me ‘just keep your bloody mouth shut’. I’m like ‘I can’t dad, I can’t’. I can’t help it.

“I will keep saying it and I know one day I will break it, whether it is this weekend, next year or whenever. I know one day I will be quicker than the times Tom has run or other people have run. But this weekend it is not about chasing records. It is about racing so so smart. I have to be on my mettle. There are a handful of us who are within a tenth of a second of each other. So tactics are paramount. I either run world class or run diabolical at some of these championships so I have to make sure I run world class.”

“Whether I go in as the favourite or the underdog, I will still feel I can win it. You could put me in a race with David Rudisha ten timesand he might hammer me ten times, but I’ll still believe I can win it the 11th time.”