It was a hectic 10 days, but for all the right reasons, covering the World Athletics Championships earlier this year.
With each evening’s feature races starting at around the same time that midweek football matches usually finish, the deadline pressure only added to the mix, but the real additional to the work-load was the record number of Scots taking part.
That ultimately resulted in what a best medal haul since Liz McColgan became the only Scot to win gold at a World Championships in 1991, Eilidh Doyle, who had won the only silver in the relay four years ago, matching that achievement this time around but this time accompanied in that 4x400m team by Zoey Clark.
With the overall British team struggling to match medal expectations it was a captain’s performance from Doyle, while Clark had already made a first solo appearance at a major championships, having won the British 400 metres title earlier in the summer.
In winning that title at an event that was doubling as World Championships trial in Birmingham the previous month, Clark had powered away from former Olympic champion Christine Ohuruogo in her heat before finding another gear in the final to see off former European indoor champion Perri Shakes-Drayton.
What made her summer’s efforts even more impressive was that while Clark was preparing for the 2017 season, the 22-year-old was also completing her chemical engineering degree at Aberdeen University. Her World Championships appearance was, in effect, the start of her career as a full-time athlete.
Taking all things into consideration, when asked to identify the outstanding Scottish performer in London, I took full account of performances by the better known athletes who had excelled without winning medals and the latest example of Doyle’s consistency that saw her, in the course of the event, surpass Yvonne Murray’s record and become the most decorated Scottish athlete at major championships, but opted for Clark.
All of which only makes it the more remarkable that neither of Scotland’s medallists was on the short-list for Scottish Athlete of the Year which was announced by the sport’s governing body earlier this week. That would have seemed unimaginable as recently as eight years ago when Doyle was one of only two Scots in the British team.
Not that, in that context, anyone could have the slightest issue with any of the quintet who were listed: Laura Muir, winner of the main award in each of the past two years and Callum Hawkins both having produced fourth place finishes at London 2017, while Eilish McColgan and Chris O’Hare each broke Scottish National Records in the course of the season over 5000 metres and 1500 metres respectively, while wheelchair racer Sammi Kinghorn became a double World Para champion.
What seemed a bit odd, however, is that this time last year we were looking at a short list of eight athletes for the top prize at the Scottish Athletics Awards and, if anything, a case has been made for that list to be lengthened rather than shortened.
It is obviously extremely healthy that such a high class group of contenders can be listed without including these two women who are themselves part of such an elite group, only six Scots ever having won World Championships medals.
They are by no means the only notable absentees either since there was no place on the list for Andy Butchart, last year’s equivalent of Clark in that he emerged onto the global scene last year when he was still an unfunded athlete and followed up on claiming sixth place in the Olympic 5000 metres in Rio with another top 10 finish – eighth this time – in the World Championships.
In the not so distant past Lynsey Sharp’s achievement in reaching the final of the 800 metres might also have been enough in itself to make her an automatic choice for this particular accolade.
Admittedly the list cannot be too long, but if a case could be made for eight athletes last year then it was surely even easier to make it this time around.
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