Ian Beattie, our Chief Operating Officer, is at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games 2018 in his capacity as Chairman of Scottish Athletics. Here is his blog reflecting on his first few days.
After a somewhat fraught journey, involving our flight being cancelled and a subsequent 24 hour delay in arriving in Gold Coast on Saturday evening Australian time, luckily we still had one free day before the start of the athletics on the Sunday.
On arrival at Brisbane Airport we were given a warm welcome by the Games volunteers, and driven to our accommodation at the main Team Scotland hotel. This is very much at the centre of all the sports, and we could immediately feel that the mood was noticeably positive following the early success of Team Scotland across a number of sports, particularly swimming and cycling.
We met up with the Scottish Athletics CEO, Mark Munro, and after a couple of glasses of wine to help beat the jetlag headed to bed at a reasonable time. Sunday was a big day for us; not only was it the opening session of the athletics, but we had genuine medal chances in the Men’s Hammer which was one of the first events of the day.
We set the alarm reasonably early on Sunday morning and headed out for a run. Although early – it was before 7.00am – the temperature was already over 20 degrees and it was clear that a lovely day awaited us. We ran along the prom for a few miles, passing the main GC2018 entertainment stage, then back up the beach. Even that early, we passed a large number of runners, walkers, surfers and other people just out enjoying the sunshine. I couldn’t help compare this to my run round Edinburgh a week or so ago, where the temperature was close to freezing with snow and a biting wind to make things even more difficult. Quite a contrast!
Around lunchtime we headed out to the athletics stadium. The Carrara Stadium was an Australian football stadium which had been converted in to a temporary athletics venue for the Games, in much the same way Hampden was converted for the Glasgow games 4 years ago. It is an impressive place and the Australians in the close to capacity crowd created a great atmosphere, particularly when any of their own athletes were competing.
Our attention for the day focused on the Men’s Hammer, where we had two Scots, Chris Bennett and Mark Dry, taking part, and the Women’s T38 Long Jump, where we were represented by Amy Carr. Bennett was considered the most likely medal candidate, but three poor opening throws meant he was eliminated from the competition, and our hearts sank. Gaining medals at these Games can have a big impact on funding levels, and seeing a genuine medal prospect drop out was a very disappointing moment for us. However Dry, who won a bronze medal at Glasgow, was not finished. His 5th round throw was his best of the day, lifting him to 4th position, and then on his final attempt he launched the hammer 73 metres 12 centimetres, enough to take him in to 3rd place and the bronze medal position. I’m sure my shout when I saw the hammer land could be heard at the other side of the stadium; I haven’t been as excited at a sports event since Scotland beat England at rugby earlier this year. It wasn’t over though as two other competitors has the chance to overtake Mark but fortunately neither did, and we had secured our first athletics medal of the Games. It wasn’t the one we had expected at the start of the day, but we were delighted with it all the same. The Team Scotland hotel has a big board which shows all the medals won, and it was nice (and to be honest a bit of a relief) to see athletics make a contribution to the board on Day 1.
Today (Monday) we have two athletics sessions. This morning our high jumpers Allan Smith and David Smith both qualified for the final with jumps of 2.21, and Zoey Clark qualified for the 400m semi- final with a very composed run. We left the stadium at lunchtime delighted that all three athletes had negotiated what were potentially difficult qualifying events, and would be back in the stadium tomorrow.
After a free afternoon, we’ll head back up to the stadium - about half an hour’s drive away from our hotel - for tonight’s session. Tonight will see the first appearance of Lindsays’ sponsored athlete Eilish McColgan in the 1,500m semi-final, along with Steph Twell, as well as Beth Potter in the 10,000m final. By the time you read this tonight’s results will probably be known, but Eilish seems to have been training very well in the build-up to the Games and I know everyone at Lindsays wishes her all the best for both events she is taking part in, the 1,500m and the 5,000m. No doubt we will face many more exciting, enthralling and nail-biting sessions of athletics over the next week. I can’t wait. Bring it on!
Eilish and Steph have qualified for the 1,500m final – Tues 10th April at @ 13.04pm BST