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azzuri · 'Our Scotland' Fossil Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 3777

see - http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/sport.cfm?id=469562006

Scots' medal haul of honour

THE 18th Commonwealth Games, which close today, have been a triumph: for Melbourne; for the Commonwealth Games movement; and for Scotland. Thanks to boxer Kenny Anderson's gold and badminton player Susan Hughes' bronze medals yesterday, 29 medals had been won by the penultimate day of competition, to ensure that, whatever happens on the final day, the team can tonight celebrate its third-best medal count, and its best on foreign soil; and they can do what they've been doing since day one, which is to wear their Scottish uniform with passion and pride.

Such emotions have not been confined to the athletes, and those Scots in Melbourne to support the team have been confronted with a rare dilemma. Would the kilt or Scotland T-shirt denote arrogance?

For the athletes, wearing the blue of Scotland this past week has been a bit like wearing Aussie kit. "Don't mess," it says, "We're serious," rather than, as in some previous Games: "You didn't know we were here, did you?"

"The spirit of Scotland," said national swimming coach Chris Martin, "stole the meet." He was talking specifically of the pool, but the success of Scotland has been one of the stories of the Games, and it has been reported as such throughout the Commonwealth.

Only in Australia has the story been virtually ignored. Six words sum up the Australian media's coverage: "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi." One newspaper has devoted a page a day to non-Aussie stories. It is called: 'Beyond the Oi, Oi, Oi.'

Yet that has not been reflective of the welcome given or the interest shown by Melburnians in the visiting teams and athletes, or the support offered to them in the venues. In fact, it's a gross distortion of this.

On balance, the Manchester Games four years ago were marginally better, suggested one observer yesterday. But it is an extremely close contest, and there are mitigating factors. Manchester had the advantage of relatively low expectations. The 2002 Games didn't have to be too spectacular to exceed them, but they were spectacular, they were marked by the enthusiasm of Mancunians, and they ended up spectacularly exceeding expectations.

Melbourne was always going to be different. Expectations were as high as the water mark left by the Sydney Olympics in 2000. It would have been difficult to exceed them, so Melbourne has contented itself with living up to them. And it has. Some have even said the unthinkable: that they've been better than Sydney, being more compact, with better transport, and an overwhelming friendliness that, said the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, helped create an atmosphere of "genial magic" in the city.

There have been negative stories and criticism but nothing to cast a shadow over the competition. The opening ceremony was lavish and spectacular, complex and obscure, but most of all it was expensive. Tickets ranged from £170 to £250, and it played out in front of thousands of empty seats.

But at the same time a free public show played out on the banks of the Yarra, the river that runs through the heart of the city. From there, hundreds of thousands watched the fireworks and the Queen's baton on its final approach to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and went home feeling excited. Those who attended the MCG went home feeling fleeced, and wondering whether, in dreaming up their extravaganza, the organisers had disappeared up their own arena.

But then the sport started, and with the predictable deluge of Australian medals, it was Scotland's success, kicked-off by Caitlin McClatchey and David Carry in the pool, that proved so surprising, and so compelling.

And so unremitting. By day five, less than half way through the competition, Scotland had exceeded the pre-Games target of 15. But analyse the medals table down the years and the performance begins to look even more significant. The three previous bests were Edinburgh in 1986 (33 medals, but against 26 nations), Manchester in 2002 (30 - ten of them in judo, which didn't feature here), and London in 1934 (27, against 11 nations). The previous best on foreign soil was Brisbane in 1982, when the return was 26 medals, in a field of 46 nations; in Melbourne, there were 71 nations and 4,500 athletes.

It adds up to a remarkable achievement, even given the improvements that lottery funding and the £4m a year Scottish Institute of Sport have brought. In ten years the lottery has been worth £211m to Scottish sport, with annual government funding also up in the same period from £8.5m to £13.7m. It is clear that the investment is starting to pay off.

An interesting - if ultimately futile - comparison can be made with other nations on the per capita medal haul. Australia is top of the big players, with one medal per 100,000 people. England has one per 515,000; Canada one per 421,000; South Africa one per 1.3m; and India, one per 2.7m. Scotland compares favourably, with one medal per 176,000. Jamaica, with one per 128,000, and New Zealand, with one per 144,000, both do better, but they all lag behind the most successful nation of all - the Isle of Man, with one medal per 37,000 people.

Such is the inherent unpredictability of sport, and the peculiar quirkiness of the Commonwealth Games. But they are enhanced rather than diminished by this. What they demonstrate is that you can plan and invest and build institutes of sport - does the Isle of Man have one? - but it is the surprise and the unexpected which thrill.

And this time, it was Scotland's turn to spring the surprise. "You'll see, talking to them, that they're good people," said Paul Bush, Scotland's chef de mission, of the swimmers. "There's nothing flash about them; they are pretty down to earth. And I think they are, to some extent, as shocked as we are."

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Abieuan · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:56 pm Post subject:

This is a great boost for the campaign for a Scottish Olympic team.