With a record 16 Scots finalising their preparations for the World Championships which get underway in London this week The Herald has reaffirmed its commitment to the long-term future of the sport by entering into partnership with Scottish Athletics ahead of the national championships.
The 125th running of the event will provide an opportunity to see the next generation of talent in action, with competitors aspiring to emulate the likes of track athletes Guy Learmonth (800m), Jake Wightman (1500m) and Andrew Butchart (5000m), as well as throwers Chris Bennett (hammer) and Nick Percy (discus) who have all claimed Scottish titles in recent years. They are all among a Scottish contingent in the British team for the World Championships which is more than twice as large as it has ever been previously.
Scottish 400m hurdler Eilidh Doyle captains the British team in which Laura Muir is joined in the 5000m by Steph Twell and Eilish McColgan while Zoey Clark contest the 400m and 4 x 400m relay, Callum Hawkins the marathon, Josh Kerr and Chris O’Hare accompany Wightman in the 1500m, Beth Potter runs in the 10,000m, Lynsey Sharp the 800m, and Lennie Waite the 3000m steeplechase.
Their appearances on the global stage are well timed to provide inspiration to their compatriots and a key consideration this year is that the Scottish Championships represent one of the last opportunities for athletes to register qualifying marks for next year’s Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. As Morag McLarty observed after winning the national cross country championships at Falkirk in the spring, however, getting into that team looks like proving more difficult in some disciplines than it was to get into the British team for last year’s Olympics in Rio, a sentiment echoed by Glaswegian 1500m runner Neil Gourley who was squeezed out of the medals when finishing fourth at the British Championships in Birmingham earlier this month behind fellow Scots O’Hare, Kerr and Wightman..
Carefully timed to provide a climax to the season for the country’s leading club runners, it is meanwhile a mark of the overall growth of the sport that the Scottish under-17 championships will now be staged alongside the senior championships, with the under-20s, under-15s and under-13s all taking place the previous week, in a bid to prevent what was becoming, due to weight of numbers, an over-long day for the junior championships, while also allowing the best under-17s to compete in the under-20s competition, and the best under-20s in the senior championships.
This year’s senior event has also been pushed back a week because so many volunteers and officials are also involved at the World Championships. Entries for the senior championships which are taking place on the weekend of August 26/27 in Grangemouth will still be accepted until August 13.
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