Contact Center Solutions Industry News

[March 27, 2006]

Athletics: SCOTS RULE CROWN UNDER

(Daily Record Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)THE compendium of Games were being put back in their box when Scalextric roared into town. Melbourne is that kind of place.

No sooner had the lights gone out on the Commonwealth Games than the Formula One boys arrived ahead of Sunday's Australia Grand Prix at Albert Park, in the shadow of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The people of Melbourne hardly batted an eyelid. If it's not athletics, it's swimming. If it's not swimming, it's cricket. If it's not cricket it's Aussie Rules Football. They love it all but they've seen it all.

Which means it takes a helluva of lot to stop them in their tracks. Scotland did that over these last two weeks, though, and that as much as anything else was our triumph.

Everywhere you went, when people realised you were a Scot, all they could take aboutwas our success. They were surprised by it and pleased with it because there's no doubt we were their second team over here.

Not that they expected us to cuff them in the pool. But that's what happened, especially in the men's swimming, where the four golds won by Gregor Tait and David Carry absolutely trounced the Aussie's single success in the pool.

Then there was wee Caitlin McClatchey, a tiny doll-like girl swimming with the muscle-bound sharks of the Aussie women team and leaving them coughing and spluttering in her slipstream.

The 20-year-old won our first gold of the Games on day one and set the tone. Apart from day nine, Scotland won a medal somewhere at something.

Our swimmers were the stars of the show and the night McClatchey and Tait won their second golds, while Kirsty Balfour took bronze, will stand out as one of the highlights of the year.

As swim coach Chris Martin said, Scotland hijacked the pool. A piper played his tunes and 9000 Aussies clapped and sang along. It was a strange, exhilarating experience.

Scotland's cyclists are as good as anyone in the world and they showed it at the velodrome.

Chris Hoy expected to win gold in the 1k time trial and finished third but shrugged off that disappointment to anchor our sprint team to victory three days later. They beat England by a hair's-breadth and if you could have bottled the electricity and brought it home you could run all the lights in your house for a month.

Kate Cull en and James McCallum, a gallus Glaswegian who was supposed to be here to make up the numbers, surprised and delighted us with shock bronzes on the cycling track. McCallum's joy was unconfined.

The swimmers and cyclists may have been the stars but we won medals in nine of the 14 events we entered, including athletics, although the lack of strength in depth in track and field is a major worry.

Chris Baillie's silver in the 110 metres hurdles was a sensational, surprise achievement, and Lee McConnell's joy at winning bronze after switching to the 400 hurdles was terrific to witness.

For me, though, Kirsty Maguire's determination to pole vault two weeks after being hooked up to a life-support machine after suffering an anaphylatic shock ranked with any medal-winning achievement here.

Sheena Sharp won two golds in the shooting events. A 52-year-old granny she might be but clearly not a woman to be messed about.

Alex Marshall and Paul Foster overcame England and a swarm of giant beetles to win the lawn bowls.

And on Saturday, Kenny Anderson capped it all with a showstopping win in b oxing's light-heavyweight division.

Anderson watched Braveheart before every fight this week but now he doesn't have to.

In Melbourne, he was our Brave-heart and had plenty of company in the men and women who wore Scotland's colours with pride.

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